Yahoo News Brexit weekly briefing: parliament seizes control as May flounders
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So we’re back where we started. Two years after negotiations began and four days before Britain was due to leave, it’s all still to play for. Deal, no deal, election, second vote, soft Brexit, hard Brexit: the EU has told Britain to decide – and MPs intend to.
Theresa May headed to Brussels last week to seek an unconditional extension of article 50 to 30 June. Ringing in her ears was a remarkable joint warning from the TUC and the CBI (ie the unions and the employers) that the country faced a national emergency and urgently needed a plan B to avert a no deal.
Also ringing in the prime minister’s ears were the howls of fury of many in the House of Commons after she delivered a statement in Downing Street that she may well live to regret, blaming squabbling MPs for delaying Brexit and telling the British public: “I am on your side.”
The EU27, unpersuaded that May had the first clue what to do if MPs rejected her deal for a third time, gave her short shrift, deciding they had had more than enough of London’s endless and increasingly destructive can-kicking and coming up with a neat dual-deadline plan to force the UK to choose.
Under this plan, the UK will remain in the EU until 22 May if MPs back Theresa May’s deal this week, but leave on 12 April without a deal – unless, by that date, it has found an alternative way forward and out of the Brexit chaos, agreed to hold European elections, and asked for a much longer delay.
There was satisfaction among the EU27 for a mechanism that leaves all options open for the UK but obliges it to choose one in the next fortnight – yet precious few illusions that it has made a no-deal Brexit any less likely. Indeed, for some on the continent it now looks the most likely outcome.
At home, Brexiters immediately began piling the pressure on May to step down as her deal – seen as highly unlikely to pass – appeared to slip away. Amid denials by Philip Hammond, Michael Gove and David Lidington that a cabinet coup was being plotted, the prime minister called an apparently inconclusive Brexiter summit at Chequers.
Meanwhile, a secret Cabinet Office document revealed chaotic planning for an end-of-days no-deal Brexit, more than a million people marched in London to demand a second vote amid a sea of witty placards, and more than 5 million signed a petition calling for article 50 to be revoked.
Brexit as usual.
What next
Exasperated MPs have seized control of the Brexit agenda (though perhaps not the outcome) after backing, by 329 votes to 302, an amendment led by the Tory MP Oliver Letwin that will allow parliament to hold a series of indicative votes on a possible way forward on Wednesday. Three ministers resigned to vote for the move.
The rest of the week looks set to be dominated by this process, though it remains to be seen what options will be voted on, and how – or whether – the government would take any notice. May as good as told the Commons on Monday that she would not back a customs union or a confirmatory vote if that was what MPs wanted.
Up to seven have been mooted: May’s deal; a customs union; a customs union plus single market; a Canada-style free-trade deal; no deal; a second referendum; or revoking article 50 altogether.
May had earlier admitted she does not yet have enough support for her deal to put to MPs for a third time, but still aims to do so. If she loses by another big margin, this could be the trigger for Conservative ministers and MPs to try and depose her.
Her fundamental Conservative problem remains: any move to seek consensus across the house on a softer Brexit, and her Eurosceptic hardliners erupt. Any push for a no deal and the pro-Europeans desert her.
Beyond this week, here is a useful timeline of key Brexit dates over the next few weeks and months.
Best of the rest
Brussels confirms return of border checks under no-deal Brexit.
People’s Vote march “too big to ignore”, organisers warn MPs.
“Mr Europe” David Lidington: the man who could replace May.
One telling image: in a Brussels corridor, the EU takes back control of Brexit.
Keep calm, and park at Manston: Kent gets ready for no-deal traffic chaos.
Pro-remain MPs draw up plans to vote on revoking article 50.
Woman behind Brexit petition to revoke article 50 receives death threats.
“The Brexodus is under way”: meet the Brits leaving the UK.
Uri Geller promises to stop Brexit using telepathy.
Tony Blair accuses Labour and Tories of being leaderless.
Little advice in place for patients in England if drug supplies dry up.
Kent pupils could be left stranded by no-deal Brexit gridlock, warns council.
UK’s top toilet roll supplier stockpiling in case of no-deal Brexit.
Top comment
In the Guardian, Rafael Behr says the EU and her MPs know Theresa May is finished, and it showed in the bloc’s plan:
Does May like this plan? It doesn’t matter. She wasn’t in the room where it happened. The summit conclusions were handed down to the petitioning nation. This is the power relationship between a ‘third country’ and the EU. Britain had better get used to it. The terms of the extension are not drafted for the prime minister’s benefit. They contain a message from the EU direct to the House of Commons. In crude terms: piss or get off the pot. If you want to leave with a deal, vote for the damned deal. If you are foolish enough to leave without a deal, do not blame us. Have a couple more weeks to think about it. But if you want something else, a referendum or a softer Brexit, work it out soon. And then send someone who isn’t Theresa May to talk to us about it.
In the New York Times, author Sam Byers brilliantly skewers the poisonous nostalgia and empty jingoism that led to all this:
So we’re all agreed: In our bid to ‘quietly make history’, we would prefer a deal that does not in fact exist and for which there is no time left to negotiate because we’ve spent all of our time getting a deal we don’t want, meaning that now we’re readying ourselves to sidestep the humiliation of a deal we don’t like by accepting the ruin of a non-deal we don’t like either. We are, in almost every sense, on a plane to nowhere, and because we have nowhere to go, we have to convince ourselves that nowhere is exactly where we wish to be … With nothing meaningful to say about our future, we’ve retreated into the falsehoods of the past, painting over the absence of certainty at our core with a whitewash of poisonous nostalgia. The result is that Britain has entered a haunted dreamscape of collective dementia, a half-waking state in which the previous day or hour is swiftly erased and the fantasies of the previous century leap vividly to the fore.
Top tweet:
Marina Hyde on Uri Geller riding to the rescue:
This changes everything. EVERYTHING. https://t.co/JrcWTE1K3z
— Marina Hyde (@MarinaHyde) March 22, 2019
