FIGHTING FOR HER LIFE
May’s deal crushed in biggest-ever defeat ++ She faces no-confidence vote today ++ Cabinet split over her plan to work with Labour ++ EU dares Britain to cancel Brexit
THERESA May was last night battling for her political life following a crushing defeat that puts Brexit in doubt.
MPs voted by a majority of 230 to reject the Withdrawal Agreement she has struck with the EU. It was the biggest government defeat in British history.
The Prime Minister called on mutinous Tory MPs to back her in a confidence vote tonight. Another defeat could trigger an election and put Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street.
Mrs May insisted she would talk to senior MPs from all parties to bring forward a revised plan by Monday. But No10 indicated she would not open formal talks with Mr Corbyn because of his ‘cynical’ approach to Brexit.
Last night’s defeat eclipses the previous record 166-vote loss inflicted on Ramsay MacDonald’s minority Labour administration in 1924.
More than a third of Conservative MPs – 118 in all – rebelled. However, there was no internal push to remove Mrs May from office, with even Boris
Johnson saying she should stay. Cabinet Remainers will now pressure her to drop her opposition to a permanent customs union in order to win support from Labour MPs.
Brexit-backing ministers instead want her to go back to Brussels and demand the removal of the Irish border backstop.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove said the European Research Group of hardline Brexiteers had effectively brought forward a softer Brexit by voting against the Withdrawal Agreement.
Chancellor Philip Hammond said: ‘I strongly back Theresa May as she reaches out across the House to build a political consensus to deliver a negotiated Brexit deal that honours the referendum result.’ On a tumultuous day:
Commons Speaker John Bercow indicated he would allow backbench MPs to seize control of the Brexit process to prevent a no-deal exit;
Mr Hammond and Business Secretary Greg Clark held an emergency conference call with business leaders, amid fears that financial markets could take fright at the scale of last night’s defeat;
Mr Hammond was cheered by fellow ministers ahead of the vote when he told the PM: ‘You must not resign’;
Mr Corbyn said the ‘catastrophic defeat’ must trigger a general election;
EU president Donald Tusk suggested that Brexit could now be reversed;
Hardline Eurosceptics and the DUP indicated they would back Mrs May in today’s confidence vote despite voting against her last night;
Mrs May prepared to fly to Brussels as early as tomorrow in a bid to wring fresh concessions out of the EU;
German foreign minister Heiko Maas warned the EU was not ready to make ‘substantial’ changes;
A string of MPs called for Brexit to be delayed;
Parliamentary aide Eddie Hughes and Tory vice-chairman Tom Pursglove resigned in order to vote against the deal;
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer piled pressure on Mr Corbyn to back a second referendum.
Mrs May told MPs she was determined to find a solution based on her rejected plan. However, she said the vote gave no clue about ‘how – or even if’ Parliament would honour the 2016 referendum.
She added: ‘Every day that passes without this issue being resolved means more uncertainty, more bitterness and more rancour. I ask MPs on all sides to listen to the British people, who want this issue settled, and to work with the Government to do just that.’
All 35 Nationalist MPs were joined by every Scottish Labour and Liberal Democrat MP in rejecting the deal.
A Cabinet source last night said the prospects of Brexit being blocked had ‘massively increased’. Another senior minister predicted Mrs May would now have to shift to a softer Brexit, saying: ‘A compromise is going to happen. We are past the high water mark of Brexit.’
A third predicted the deal could be revived if the EU agreed to drop or severely limit the Irish backstop, which is such a problem for Tory Brexiteers and Mrs May’s governing partners in the DUP. The minister said: ‘The deal is dead, but if you said would this deal minus the backstop be dead, I would say very much no.’ Health Secretary Matt Hancock said there would ‘clearly have to be changes’ to the Withdrawal Agreement.
But EU chief Mr Tusk tweeted: ‘If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?’
EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker warned: ‘The risk of a disorderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom has increased with this evening’s vote.’
No 10 confirmed that Mrs May would open talks with senior MPs – including Labour representatives. But a spokesman insisted she was not ready to accept Labour’s plan for a permanent customs union, saying the UK must have an ‘independent trade policy’ after Brexit.
We ALL knew it was coming. For days, even weeks, it had been perfectly obvious that the Prime Minister would lose the Commons vote on her deal with the eU.
What we did not know, however, was how staggeringly bad the result would be. And even in an age of political shocks, the raw figures — 432 against the deal, but only 202 for it, a defeat by 230 votes — are simply extraordinary.
Never in history has any government lost a vote by such a colossal margin. For Theresa May, the Tory Party and the UK, these are dark, uncertain and dangerous waters.
Has there ever been such blatant political narcissism? Have our MPs ever been more indifferent to economic sanity and political reality?
Have they ever been less willing to compromise, or more desperate to flaunt their supposed principles? And have they ever talked more about the national interest in theory while doing so much to damage it in practice?
More on the MPs in a moment. But, first, a word about the woman at the centre of last night’s high drama.
In normal times, such a colossal humiliation would mean curtains for Mrs May.
Debacle
In 1979, James Callaghan was forced to call a General election after losing a confidence motion by a single vote — the kind of margin Mrs May would today consider a glorious landslide.
In 1940, Neville Chamberlain won a vote of confidence by 81 votes after the debacle of the Nazi invasion of Norway. Yet with 100 fellow Tory MPs refusing to back him, he knew the game was up and agreed to step down.
However, last night’s defeat differs for one reason.
There is no plausible candidate to succeed Mrs May. Having weathered the slings and arrows for so long, she seems to have concluded that it is her duty to battle on, despite the sneers of her critics.
The most obvious analogy is with Sir Robert Peel’s rift with his own party over the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846.
Peel, like Mrs May, had great moral integrity, but was an awkward and uncharismatic speaker. He was a pragmatist, with a strong sense of the national interest, rather than an ideologue.
At a time of great economic hardship, he realised that abolishing the protectionist Corn Laws, which propped up rich Tory farmers but made it impossible to import cheap food for the people, was the only way forward.
But he also knew it would alienate the hardliners in his own party, and would mean his political death warrant.
The obvious difference is that whereas Peel got his way, with support from the Opposition parties, it is hard to see how Mrs May can save her deal. So while Peel sacrificed himself for the national interest, Mrs May is sacrificing herself for — well, for what? Where does she go from here? As I scan the Commons benches for options, my heart sinks. On the Left, there is Jeremy Corbyn, whose cynical evasiveness masks the fact that he would quite happily see the economy driven into a ditch if it gives him a chance to turn Britain into an east German theme park.
On the Right, meanwhile, there are far too many extremist Brexiteers who would prefer a no-deal exit, with all the economic chaos and dislocation it would bring, to a sensible compromise.
Jacob Rees-Mogg and his friends would be secure, of course. They are rich men. But what about the rest of us?
As for the likes of Jo Johnson, Dominic Grieve, Anna Soubry, Yvette Cooper and Chuka Umunna, their ideological vanity and preening self-indulgence know no bounds.
even though Britain voted to leave the eU in 2016, they seem determined to ride roughshod over the democratically expressed will of the majority.
Still, they are openly plotting a second referendum, which they dishonestly call a People’s Vote. Are they so indifferent to the alienation this would cause in vast swathes of the country?
What neither wing of this unholy alliance seems to understand is that they cannot both get what they want.
It never occurs to them that if fanatical Remainers and ultra-Brexiteers dislike Mrs May’s deal, then her policy probably represents a pragmatic compromise with reality.
Yet both camps, cocooned in bubbles of ideological selfregard, prefer playing to their tiny online fan clubs than reconciling their ambitions with the real world.
The ultra-Brexiteers, for example, continue to peddle the fantasy of some magical ‘other’ deal, which Mrs May has unaccountably failed to obtain, that they could somehow winkle out of the eU.
Contempt
These are the people who told us Germany’s car-makers would force their government, and therefore Brussels, to give us a good deal within days of our vote to leave the eU. Now they have a new unicorn in sight, though again the details seem frustratingly elusive.
The fanatical Remainers, meanwhile, have spent the past few days briefing the media that, in alliance with the shamelessly partisan Commons Speaker, John Bercow, that they aim to ‘take control’ of Brexit by crippling the executive, shutting down the government and, presumably, scrapping the entire business.
For all their posturing about the rights of Parliament (i.e. themselves), you could hardly find a more flagrant example of contempt for democracy.
I appreciate they were disappointed by the vote to leave. But are they blind, so trapped in their gilded cages, that they cannot understand what a backlash they would unleash?
So what next? In an ideal world, Mrs May would merrily head back to Brussels, where other eU leaders would see sense, amend the hated Irish backstop and give her a deal she could sell to the Commons.
Alas, there are two gaping flaws in that scenario. First, the eU elite have shown precious little interest in compromising with the realities of British politics.
Why would they? After all, their friend Tony Blair has promised them that if they refuse to bend, they can get a second referendum and force us to stay in after all.
Second, and more worryingly, I now wonder whether there is
any sensible deal that the Commons would accept.
Far from mellowing, attitudes seem to be hardening daily.
Many Brexiteers appear unwilling to accept any compromise with the eU.
As for the Remainers, their hysterical antipathy to any kind of Brexit, even a managed, sensible one, means they would rather sacrifice democracy itself than contemplate life outside Jean-Claude Juncker’s bibulous embrace.
In essence, though, these are symptoms of the same problem. We have a political class who, insulated from the realities of ordinary lives, are more interested in pursing their own strange ideological obsessions than in compromising for the good of the country.
I often read that Britain is deeply divided, that passions run high and we live in an age of unprecedented political and cultural confrontation.
That has never rung true to me. Polls show most people, however they voted, agree that the referendum should be respected. Most want our politicians to get on with Brexit, without crashing the economy or causing unnecessary chaos, and move on to other things.
So in that sense, the silent majority are not divided at all.
Precious
It is our MPs who are divided. It is they, not the people, who insist on elevating their precious consciences to the status of holy writ. And it is the MPs who are obsessed with customs unions, backstops and the rest of the pettifogging babble they have inflicted on us day after day.
Yes, details matter and principles are at stake. But this is the real world, the real economy, not some ideological game. And if, as I fear, the uncertainty continues, as we approach the cliff edge and the economy totters, who will these posturing pygmies blame?
We may live in an age of uncertainty, but you can bet on one thing. The last people they will blame are the real culprits — themselves.