Brexit showdown
Theresa May averted a humiliating Commons defeat on her flagship EU Withdrawal Bill this week, but was forced to cede ground to rebels. In order to quash an amendment that would have handed MPS a decisive say over the final stages of Brexit negotiations, she promised a fresh amendment that would offer a compromise position. PRO-EU lawmakers hope the move will effectively take a “no deal” Brexit off the table. It came at the end of a frantic day of horse-trading, during which the Government suffered its first Brexit resignation – of justice minister Phillip Lee.
Last week, it was the Tories’ pro-brexit faction that was causing May grief. Her Brexit secretary, David Davis, threatened to resign unless a time limit was placed on the “backstop” proposal that will tie Britain to the EU customs union if no customs deal is reached. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, meanwhile, was secretly taped telling a private meeting that Brexit talks under May were heading for “meltdown”. Trump, he said, would do a better job.
What the editorials said
“Not for the first time, a good day for May is a bad day for the nation,” said The Independent. Thanks to the sterling efforts of Tory whips, she scraped through this week’s votes, but all that can really be said for these victories is that they “kick the can down the road”. May’s entire focus seems to be on holding her party together, rather than achieving a decent Brexit deal, agreed The Guardian. Her stand-off with Davis – resolved through a meaningless “technical note” saying that the UK “expects” any customs backstop arrangement to last until the end of 2021 at the latest – was farcical.
The Brexit process is bogged down, said The Daily Telegraph. But the fault for that lies as much with meddlesome lawmakers as the PM. The Bill currently before Parliament “is not supposed to be a rerun of the referendum debate, but to enact the decision of voters to leave the EU”. The rebels are right that MPS should have powers of scrutiny and veto over the final Brexit deal, said The Times. However, the amendment regarding the “meaningful vote” went too far. The Commons “should not be in the position of negotiating a withdrawal treaty line by line. That is a task for government.”
What the commentators said
History will “not look kindly” on our leaders’ handling of Brexit, said Rachel Sylvester in The Times. It beggars belief that, two years after the EU referendum, the Cabinet still hasn’t reached an agreed position on what the outcome should be, or even on the best customs arrangements. Labour is “equally incoherent”. The problem is that neither May nor Jeremy Corbyn wants to come clean to the public about the unpalatable choice facing Britain, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. The Brexit plane is circling in the air because the horrible reality is that the flight can only end with either an “orderly arrival in a second-rate location” or a “fiery crash landing”. “That is what it means to honour the referendum. That is what it meant all along.”
Not so, said Daniel Hannan in The Sunday Telegraph. Had politicians ditched the “tribalism” of the referendum campaign and worked together, we could have “built a consensus that most Leavers and most Remainers could have lived with”. As it is, we seem to be “inching towards an open-ended transition period” in which we’ll still be bound by EU rules and still have to shell out “squillions” to Brussels, yet will have no seat at the table – the worst of all possible worlds. Brexiteers are in universal despair about the current state of Brexit negotiations, said James Forsyth in The Spectator, but they’re divided over what to do about it. Two camps have emerged: the “hedgers” and the “ditchers”. The hedgers, who include Michael Gove, think we’ve left it too late to prepare for a no-deal Brexit, so the important thing is just to get to 29 March 2019, when the UK will have legally left the EU. They can then try to install a Brexiteer in the Treasury and push for a better deal. By contrast, the ditchers, represented by Boris Johnson, believe there has to be a drastic change of course now. By next March, they argue, the UK will have agreed to pay the divorce bill, thereby losing much of its leverage with Brussels, and politicians will be loath to reopen old debates.
What next?
The fresh amendment that is expected to give MPS new powers over the final stages of Brexit will go back to the House of Lords next week. If peers endorse it, the EU Withdrawal Bill will finally become law.
Attention will then turn to two contentious trade bills that are due to be debated by MPS in July, reports The Guardian. These contain amendments that would keep the UK’S current customs arrangement with the EU. The “big battle”, warns one Tory MP, is yet to come.