Theresa May’s Brexit deal demands a free vote

For Theresa May, Brexit does not mean Brexit. It means exit. There is nothing more exhilarating to the House of Commons than a prime minister on the run. There is a smell of blood in the water. Sharks cruise the corridors. British politicians set aside the nation’s interest. They default to raw ambition.

But it is not exit yet. May has nine lives, even if she is on her last one. For two years she has blundered. She has promised frictionless trade but no customs union. She has rejected Norway and Canada. She has tried to appease everyone in the hope that something would turn up. Finally, at Chequers in the summer and again at cabinet on Wednesday, the basic weakness of Britain’s negotiating position was laid bare.

From day one after the referendum, Britain was supplicant to a neighbouring superpower. It was Poland to the EU’s Russia. MPs hate being reminded of such facts, preferring to vie with each other in jingoism. But May was right to rebut the historical illiteracy of her “toff leavers”, with their reckless talk of vassalage, capitulation and Hitler. A deal with the EU is about cross‑border trade, not conquest.

Given the nature of Britain’s economic geography, the most plausible long-term option for the UK has always been to negotiate a return to its old free-trade area status, some version of the so-called Norway option. The Downing Street draft leaves open such an option – as it leaves open a “hard Brexit”. It is about the immediate future next March, a choice between on the one hand no deal, Dover chaos, a hard border in Northern Ireland and snooping coastguards, and on the other May’s proffered temporary compromise based on continuing membership of the customs union. The latter is palpably in the national interest. The reason so many of May’s Brexit ministers have resigned is that they know there is nothing better. They have guarded their careers, taken refuge in cowardice and flown the nest.

Since May cannot now rely on her own party, polluted as it is with disloyalists, she must show Brussels she has the support of parliament as a whole. While that may not secure her leadership, it should reassure the EU’s leaders that their agreed 585-page declaration is not defunct. This requires an early vote. Given that both parties are divided, it is in the national interest that the vote should be free.

At the time of the referendum we were told that a majority of MPs were personally for remaining in the EU. The prime minister’s hope – and her intention in a plethora of private meetings – is to mobilise that majority in support of the deal. Her mistake was to stress its hard rather than soft credentials. Everything she said was directed not at reassuring the soft-Brexit majority, but at appeasing her own hardliners. Why explicitly ridicule Canada and Norway, when you know that an “outer rim” of non-EU states, perhaps with Britain in the lead, may one day rely on a free-trade area, even if without open borders? May seemed tied to her former double-speak.

No-confidence proceedings

Forty-eight Conservative MPs would need to back a no-confidence vote in Theresa May to trigger a leadership contest, according to party rules.

There are two ways a contest can be triggered, most obviously if the leader of the party resigns. If they do not, 15% of Conservative MPs must write to the chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tories. With the party’s current crop of 317 MPs, 48 would be needed.

After David Cameron announced his resignation, five Tory MPs stood for the leadership. Unlike Labour party rules, under which candidates go to a ballot of members as long as they have the support of 15% of the party’s MPs, Conservative candidates are whittled down to a final two before party members have their say.

The ballot is based on “one member, one vote”, but in 2016 one of the final two candidates, Andrea Leadsom, withdrew from the race after a damaging interview with the Times about the fact that May did not have children. Her withdrawal meant May was made party leader without having been elected by members.

A result of this tactic has been to make it difficult for her to garner support from a fanatically oppositional Labour party, and from other parties inclined to remain. Jeremy Corbyn and his Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, claim to be in favour of remaining in a customs union. That is still an option under the deal. Why not vote with May? The problem, on display at the dispatch box, is that Corbyn is positively gloating at the prospect of her downfall and a general election. If so, Labour will be complicit in a no-deal outcome.

Tory MPs have no alternative leader who, by any stretch of the imagination, can give Britain a “harder” Brexit than that negotiated by May. It therefore makes no sense for them to vote down May’s deal, which would almost certainly mean either her resignation or a general election – or both. As for Labour MPs, it is doubtful if they would really welcome a third election in quick succession, whatever Corbyn might want. Can they not see that May’s deal offers them the way forward most of them appear to want?

For all her past mistakes, May’s handling of Brexit in recent weeks has been dogged and brave. David Cameron’s referendum dealt her the toughest hand given to any prime minister since the second world war – many would say near unplayable. May does not invite sympathy, nor is she an adept manager of people. Yet for all the weakness of her hand, she has so far steered her negotiators and her cabinet to a rickety compromise – one that is, for the time being, in the national interest. There is no other way in sight of getting through to next March without a chaotic disruption to UK trade.

Whatever the future holds for May, MPs should surely support this next step on the rocky footpath to a new relationship with the EU. Heaven help us, there will be time for new arguments ahead.

• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist