There is one way May can take back control . . .
IN HER landmark Brexit speech at Lancaster House, Theresa May was clear. ‘ We will take back control,’ she said just over a year ago. And she was right. This morning, lots of people are indeed taking back control. One of them is Jeremy Corbyn. Cynically, but adroitly, he is manoeuvring himself into position to outflank Mrs May on membership of the European customs union.
Last November, and then again in December, he sabotaged amendments from Labour moderates Ian Murray and Chris Leslie that would have produced precisely the same outcome as the one he will advocate on Monday.
We shall hear lots about protecting the Northern Ireland peace process in this volte-face. But the true reason for the shift is pressure from the unions, approaching London elections, and that Corbynite Holy Grail – forcing an early General Election.
Some others taking back control are May’s pro-EU rebels. Tired of the Kamikaze Brexiteers setting the agenda, the Kamikaze Remainers are flexing their own muscles. Anna Soubry, Ken Clarke and as many as a dozen of their colleagues are forming an unholy alliance with Corbyn in an effort to enforce a pudding-soft departure from the EU.
In response, Jacob Rees-Mogg and his shadowy European Research Group have warned May against being ‘held to ransom’ by the Soubryites, which is the Tory equivalent of Al Capone telling Eliot Ness to stop bullying him.
In fact, the one person no longer in control of events is the Prime Minister. For the first time since making her own Faustian pact with the DUP, May’s fate rests in the hands of others.
A combination of her own mismanagement, perennial bad fortune and ideological bl oody- mindedness at t he fringes of her party mean she is again starring into the political abyss. So within Downing Street, the lights are burning late in a fresh attempt to pull her back from the brink.
THE first part of that survival strategy rests on the Cabinet. May knows t hat any major fracture within the Government’s inner circle would now be terminal.
Hence Thursday’s carefully choreographed bonding session at Chequers, which saw her deftly guiding guests between the ornate Great Hall, the more intimate Hawtrey Room, and finally the Great Parlour, where they assembled for what one Minister described as ‘the hostage photo’.
Despite such cynicism, the feeling was that May had done a commendable job in soothing competing egos and securing a workable consensus. ‘She got us where we needed to be,’ said one guest at Chequers. ‘By the end, everyone was basically happy.’ But keeping the Cabinet happy is not enough. May now has to find a way of neutralising the pincer movement being masterminded by the potentially lethal alliance of The Absolute Boy and The Absolute Soubry.
One option could simply be to ignore it. As a No 10 insider explained, while the intention of the Soubry amendment to the Trade Bill is to force Britain to remain within the customs union, it may not necessarily have the desired binding effect.
‘When these things are tabled, a lot depends on legal interpretation of the detail. They don’t always have the result those drafting the amendment expect,’ said the insider. But given the political symbolism of the issue, an insouciant shrug in defeat is not a viable response. Not least because it would be interpreted by May’s opponents as a further gratuitous assault on the primacy of Parliament.
Alternatively, she could cut her losses, explain to her Eurosceptic wing that there simply isn’t parliamentary support for a hard Brexit, and accept the amendment.
At which point the Brexiteers would tear May, her Government and what was left of her party to shreds.
That’s why the preferred strategy of the Prime Minister and her advisers is to play it long. They believe time is their best friend.
This week, at a special Downing Street meeting, May will bind in the remaining Cabinet members to the position agreed at Chequers. Then on Friday she will deliver the long-anticipated ‘Florence II’ speech.
And before the crunch Commons vote on the Trade Bill, there will be another European Council meeting, with t he anticipation of more substantive progress on the terms and timetable of withdrawal.
One No 10 adviser said: ‘Over the next few months we’re going to see real progress and that will create a significant change in the atmosphere.’
Perhaps. But if it doesn’t, then May has one more button to press. And it is bright red and embossed with a mushroom cloud. When John Major lost his crucial vote in 1993 on t he Maastricht Treaty, he immediately tabled a motion binding acceptance of the Social Chapter to confidence in his Government.
WERE May to lose any equally vital vote on Brexit, it’s likely she, too, would be forced to present Soubry and her colleagues with a stark choice between sticking to their principles and forcing a General Election, or standing by their Prime Minister. Officially, No10 says this is not a course of action they are contemplating. But unofficially they accept it is where their stance on exiting the customs union may ultimately lead them.
When I asked a Downing Street official if there were any circumstances where the Prime Minister could accept defeat on the issue, their response was a succinct ‘No’.
We have not yet reached the stage where Mrs May is having to take such a fateful gamble with her Government’s survival. But she must find a way of taking back control. And she needs to do it quickly.