After a third Commons defeat of her unloved Brexit plans, Theresa May surveyed the parliamentary wreckage around her with a morose air. “I fear we are reaching the limits of this process in this House,” she said. Labour MPs swiftly jeered: “You are!”
The PM’s words were seen by some backbenchers as her first real hint that a general election now looked increasingly like the only way out of the whole sorry mess. It certainly felt like her patience was close to snapping.
But although May’s remarks were an admission that she is rapidly running out of road, there is still some road left. And her whole strategy has been based on an assumption that MPs will only jam on the brakes once the car gets right up to the cliff-edge.
“She talked about ‘reaching’ [the end of the road], not ‘reached’,” one aide stressed. And the truth is that May had spent Friday doing what she always does: grinding down her opposition with the threat that the alternative to her Brexit is no Brexit at all.
This vote was always going to be a parliamentary stunt, aimed more at embarrassing Labour MPs with the claim that on the very day that Brexit was meant to happen, they opted instead to head towards a set of pointless European parliamentary elections.
And although the defeat was significant, it was lower than the two previous hammerings. After a 230-vote defeat, then a 149-vote defeat, a loss by 58 votes showed some progress.
It wasn’t third time lucky, but it was third time alive. May lives to fight another day, and to try a fourth, final time. The PM’s spokesman told HuffPost UK afterwards: “We are at least going in the right direction.”
One government source pointed out that the 286 votes for the Withdrawal Agreement was higher than those cast earlier this week for an EU customs union alternative and second referendum. “We got more votes than anything else,” they said, before smiling at their own attempt to spin the figures as a victory. “Well, anything but ‘no’.”
Just before the division bell rang out for her third defeat, May went public with what she had only said privately to her Tory backbench 1922 Committee earlier this week: “I am prepared to leave this job earlier than I intended to secure the right outcome for our country.”
After the result, some Conservatives wanted her to quit even quicker, and not wait for another vote. Ministers and MPs were again set to ask her to step aside. In the crowded media ‘huddle’ outside the Commons chamber, her spokesman dismissed the idea of her stepping aside immediately: “The prime minister is focused on delivery for the country.”
The sang-froid among No.10 staff was bolstered by the way some hardened Brexiteers finally came round to the deal.
MP after MP folded like a row of cheap tents, with 41 ‘switchers’ dropping their previous die-in-the-ditch opposition. Each hardliner made plain the taste of May’s humble pie felt like ashes in their mouths, but it was more palatable than a long delay to Brexit or a dreaded second referendum.
Richard Drax was particularly unhappy after the vote. “I personally feel utterly ashamed of myself for betraying everything I believed in, that this deal was a rotten deal,” he said “I had to swallow everything I believe in. There’s only one thing the prime minister can do: get us out on 12th April. Because if we don’t, God help us.”
Fellow Brexiteer Gareth Johnson was as downbeat: “I was rather hoping tonight to be able to crack open some champagne and celebrate the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. Sadly, I am more likely to be reaching for the anti-depressants.”
They were in good company. Brexiteers had to admit nothing in May’s plan had changed, but claim somehow the prospect of losing Brexit had increased. Iain Duncan Smith said “what has changed is the balance of risks”. May has constantly warned that no Brexit was the alternative, but now it seemed the penny had dropped.
Boris Johnson chose to tweet his own Damascene conversion, rather than verbalise it in the Commons, perhaps aware that clips of his flip-flop could go viral among his critics.
During the vote, he showed his reluctance by staying seated until the chamber emptied. Yet when he finally got up to troop towards the government voting lobby, Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards pounced on the historic moment. “Hoorayyyy!” he jeered.
Another key section in the debate came when former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab looked like he was folding too. Seeing the way things were going, fellow MP John Baron pleaded with him to stand firm. But Raab said “anger is not a political strategy”, adding “I cannot countenance an even longer extension, or holding European elections in May”.
Raab, seen by many as a potential leadership contender, won some praise from DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds for at least urging May to go back to Brussels to get a better deal. But Dodds dug in even further later, telling the BBC: “I would stay in the European Union and remain rather than risk Northern Ireland’s position. That’s how strongly I feel about the union.”
Some 34 Tories voted against May’s deal, in the end. That was double what some whips had expected. Earlier, European Research Group (ERG) vice chairman Steve Baker had sent a WhatsApp message to colleagues that underlined he would never surrender.
Baker quoted at length the Bible passage from St Paul’s letter to the Romans. “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse... Live in harmony with one another. Do not repay evil with evil.” Colleagues should “leave room for God’s wrath”.
When the 58-vote defeat was announced by the Speaker, the pound tanked once more on the money markets, as the twin uncertainties of a no-deal exit and a general election surfaced. Yet as a Brussels spokesman said that “a no-deal scenario on 12 April is now a likely scenario”, it was clear that the cliff-edge had just been put back once more.
Perhaps the biggest fib May told today was her threat before the vote that “this is the last opportunity to guarantee Brexit”. Straight after it, she said she “will continue to press the case for the orderly Brexit”.
May’s immediate hope is that next week Sir Oliver Letwin’s attempt to find a compromise Brexit will fail to win a majority. Or that even if it does, she will then bring her deal back a further time. And with that April deadline looming, it really would be a last time. To win, she needs the DUP to whittle down her own Tory rebels to a real, irreducible core of around a dozen. “There are things we can do to get them,” one Cabinet minister said.
The PM tried to reach out to Labour MPs today, offering to incorporate their plan to give parliament a vote over the next phase of the Brexit talks. Yet she managed to win over a grand total of just two more Labour backbenchers, putting the number up from three to five.
And Labour’s Wes Streeting put his finger on the real problem. Now that she had announced she was quitting, few on the opposition benches want to vote for anything that puts a hard Brexiteer in Downing Street.
May’s reply was meant as reassurance, hinting that even a new leader would still be stuck with a parliament that was firmly against no-deal. “The numbers in the House will not change,” she said. “The numbers across the House will be the same.”
Yet that unshifting arithmetic is her biggest problem of all. If the numbers do not change for her deal, May could be forced into asking for a year-long delay to Brexit - or forced to trigger a general election few in her party want.
Outside parliament amid the fluttering Union Jacks, a Brexit protestor mangled their chant through a loudspeaker. “May out! Brexit out! Corbyn now!” they yelled.
Now that really would be very 2019.