CHAOS REIGNS
May loses control after ministers’ mass revolt to rule out No Deal. Now she wants THIRD vote on HER deal and warns: Back me or risk losing Brexit altogether
CHAOS gripped the Government last night as Theresa May gave MPs a week to pass her Brexit deal – or stay in the EU for years.
On an extraordinary day at Westminster, 17 members of the Government defied a three-line whip and helped Labour rule out No Deal.
Welfare minister Sarah Newton quit after voting against, while a string of others abstained, including Cabinet ministers Amber Rudd, David Gauke, Greg Clark, David Mundell and Claire Perry.
The rebellion led to a Government defeat by 321 votes to 278. However, with the Prime Minister’s authority in tatters, Downing Street indicated none of the rebels was likely to be sacked. Minutes after the vote, Mrs May, her voice hit by a heavy cold, warned MPs she would be obliged to seek a lengthy extension of Article 50 unless her plan is passed at the third attempt next week.
Sources last night suggested the withdrawal agreement – defeated by 149 votes on Tuesday – could be put forward again as soon as Monday.
The Prime Minister said a lengthy delay could mean a softer deal, a second referendum
or even no Brexit at all. Mrs May said there was a clear majority in Parliament against leaving the EU without a deal on March 29.
MPs will be asked to vote today on whether to formally authorise her to seek a delay when she attends an EU summit in Brussels next week.
Mrs May said a short technical delay until June 30 would be possible if MPs backed her plan before then.
But if MPs would not back it, there would have to be a much longer extension, requiring the UK to take part in European Parliament elections in May, she said.
‘I do not think that would be the right outcome,’ she said. ‘But the House needs to face up to the consequences of the decisions it has taken.’ On a day of drama: Brexiteers were split over whether to vote for the PM’s deal if it is returned to the Commons;
A cross-party group of MPs prepared to force through plans today that will allow Parliament to ‘take control’ and begin building a consensus for a soft exit;
Chief whip Julian Smith held talks with the DUP on revised legal advice
‘Face up to the consequences’
suggesting that the UK could pull out of the Irish backstop if it undermined the Good Friday Agreement;
Commons Speaker John Bercow indicated he could block the Government from putting the Brexit deal to a vote again under parliamentary rules that prevent the same proposition twice in a year.
In a further blow to Mrs May, six Cabinet ministers backed an alternative ‘Plan B’ Brexit proposal put forward by Tory backbenchers.
Mrs May had allowed a free vote on the so- called ‘ Malthouse Compromise’ plan following a Cabinet rebellion yesterday. Gavin Williamson, Sajid Javid, Andrea Leadsom, Liam Fox and Chris Grayling warned the PM she would spark the resignation of some Brexiteer ministers if she tried to ban them from voting for the plan.
Mr Williamson, the Defence Secretary, said it would be ‘daft’ to try to whip the party against a plan that had widespread support on the Tory benches, and warned it would ‘cause a lot of problems’ – forcing No 10 to back down and allow a free vote.
The proposal, which was effectively for a managed No Deal, was heavily defeated by 376 to 164. But it attracted the support of a string of potential Tory leadership candidates keen to parade their Eurosceptic credentials, including Mr Hunt, Mr Javid, Mr Williamson, Mrs Leadsom and Boris Johnson.
Mrs May had planned to hold a free vote on a Government motion which opposed No Deal but pointed out that it remained the ‘legal default’ unless MPs agreed a deal.
But the plan was hijacked by Labour’s Yvette Cooper who forced a vote on a separate amendment that ruled out No Deal in all circumstances – effectively opening the door to revoking Article 50 if a deal cannot be agreed.
The amendment passed by just four votes, sparking panic on the Government benches.
Tory whips tried to reverse the result in a second vote 15 minutes later but ended up losing by 43 votes as a string of ministers abstained.
The decision not to discipline the rebels sparked fury among Brexiteers. Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘I have never in 27 years as an MP seen anything like what is happening now.
‘How can government continue if collective responsibility has broken down and when whipped ministers deliberately abstain?’
One Cabinet minister said: ‘It was utter chaos. We were promised a free vote on no deal and then suddenly we were not getting it. There was a risk that that vote would be lost so I had to abstain, knowing I might be sacked.’
Simon Clarke, a senior figure in the pro-Brexit European Research Group of MPs, indicated he would vote for the deal. Mr Clarke told ITV he faced an option between ‘a bad deal and no Brexit’.
But the ERG’s deputy chairman Steve Baker said he would ‘keep voting this down, however many times it’s brought back’.
The motion before the House today calling for delay means there is very little chance of Britain leaving on March 29 as Mrs May has promised. The only chance of that would be if the EU decided not to grant the extension, or the third ‘meaningful’ vote was carried.
DURING more than 25 years of reporting politics at Westminster, I have seen a great many remarkable and astonishing events.
But never anything remotely like the extraordinary and destructive political typhoon that swirled through the House of Commons last night — leaving chaos behind it.
Such unprecedented and profoundly disturbing events normally signal the death of a government — and the destruction of a prime minister.
Five Cabinet ministers defying a three-line government whip — the most powerful instrument of power any prime minister possesses?
That’s never happened before in living memory.
It is very rare for a Cabinet minister to defy the direct orders of a prime minister — as Labour’s Robin Cook bravely did over the Iraq War before quitting the Blair government.
Humiliating
It’s completely unheard of for a minister to defy a threeline whip and survive.
Yet Welfare Secretary Amber Rudd, Justice Secretary David Gauke, Business Secretary Greg Clark, Energy Minister Claire Perry and Scottish Secretary David Mundell are still in their jobs this morning — despite their open defiance of the Prime Minister and the Government they say they support.
As a result, the minority Tory government was defeated twice on key Brexit votes.
And, despite failing in the most public and humiliating way possible to push her flagship policy through the Commons, Mrs May, too, is still in office this morning.
More precisely, she woke up in her bed in Downing Street. But last night’s events showed that she is in No 10 but not in power — to use the phrase expressed with devastating effect by Norman Lamont about John Major after being sacked as Chancellor in the wake of Britain’s Black Wednesday debacle, when sterling crashed out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, with interest rates soaring to a terrifying 15 per cent.
Mrs May’s authority is gone. Ministers are contemptuous of her authority. They can rebel against her orders with impunity.
And as a grisly metaphor for her loss of command, the Prime Minister has lost her voice, with a gallant Michael Gove obliged to step in for Mrs May yesterday afternoon.
Some of her MPs were saying that it’s not just her voice she’s lost. She’s lost her hearing as well. And soon she’ll lose her job.
Amid all this debacle, a brutal and deeply unedifying row has broken out within the senior ranks of the Conservative Party as government whips are blaming Downing Street for the shambles.
They are already naming names — Gavin Barwell, the prime minister’s most trusted aide and her Downing Street chief of staff. It was reported last night that the whips are ‘incandescent’ that Downing Street officials gave Cabinet ministers the nod that they could defy instructions and vote with a rebel amendment blocking a No Deal Brexit.
In other words, blood is on the carpet. There’s been a disgraceful breakdown of trust. An outbreak of civil war at the very top of the Conservative Party.
For the past few months, Theresa May has been desperately battling to prevent the pro-European wing on one side and the ultra-Brexiteers on the other side of the Tory Party from breaking apart. Last night, it was even worse: she faced mutiny. And she lacked the strength and authority to face it down. She gave in to the rebels and there is now a huge price to pay.
Weak though she is, there’s no sign Mrs May will quit despite enduring countless humiliations and defeats.
Cats have nine lives. Mrs May has enjoyed more. Many more.
Incredible though it sounds — don’t rule her out from emerging from this latest crisis.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his shadow ministers keep on saying that Mrs May’s Brexit deal is finished.
I am not so sure. Despite last night’s shambles, Mrs May still holds some cards.
And although her deal is unquestionably on life support in the emergency ward, the switch has not yet been turned off. There is a chance of revival. I believe that for all the chaos and confusion of the past 48 hours, a way forward could develop.
Consider the facts. Yesterday morning, Theresa May woke up in the knowledge that her EU withdrawal deal had been voted down in the Commons by a massive 149 votes.
Feuding
Pausing only to take medication for her racking cough, she went straight into an early morning emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss the possible consequences if the Government was defeated again, in last night’s vote.
Those who witnessed ministers emerge from that session tell me that they looked tired, almost broken and deeply depressed.
There then followed what must have seemed to the Prime Minister a blissful respite: the Chancellor’s spring statement on the state of the economy.
Normally this is one of the major events of the year. This time it was all but completely overshadowed by the Brexit chaos.
And by early afternoon it was back to Brexit, with Michael Gove — one of the most ardent Brexiteers — standing in for Mrs May.
By 7pm, the rebellion was under way, government was in chaos, and feuding had broken out at the very top.
To many voters, this must all seem totally mad and out of touch with the realities of their daily lives.
Even someone such as me, well versed in the craziness of Westminster, finds it hard to comprehend what is going on.
Blackmail
But curiously enough, this is what I predict could happen.
It now looks likely that the Prime Minister will use last night’s events to terrify her Brexiteer opponents into submission.
She will effectively blackmail them by saying that if they continue to cause trouble Brexit will not happen after all.
It’s far too soon to be certain but it seems highly likely that the Prime Minister will rise from her sick bed to put her deal before MPs in a so-called ‘meaningful vote’ for the third time next week.
And that she will threaten them that if they vote her down again, Brexit itself will be kicked into the long grass.
Not just a delay of a few weeks to Article 50 of the kind that has been discussed up to now. But a delay of two years or more.
Reassuringly, at last, there are signs that Mrs May’s diehard opponents are about to give in.
They are learning the hard way that you underestimate this very formidable lady at your peril.