Theresa May is certainly cutting it fine for any last-ditch improvement on her Brexit deal, ahead of the planned Big Vote tomorrow. All weekend, breathless aides tried to inject some drama into proceedings by suggesting that ‘the RAF are on standby’, ready to whisk the PM in a jet over the channel for urgent talks. Instead of a Brussels dash, all she got was a Sunday night phone call with Jean-Claude Juncker and early this morning No10 suggested there was still ‘deadlock’. Things could change any minute, and this could be the EU playing hardball in retaliation for May’s blame-game speech on Friday. But with just 18 days to Exit Day, all these frayed nerves ain’t helping anyone.
Tweets on Friday from EU’s Michel Barnier offered some kind of legal assurance of a joint legislative instrument. And it’s unthinkable that Brussels won’t try to offer something today, helping to peel off some Tory rebels and give May some small measure of momentum tomorrow. Yet Barnier also infuriated the Brexiteer European Research Group - and crucially the DUP - by signalling the best solution was a return a Northern Ireland-only ‘backstop’. Without any new substantial legal breakthrough signed off by Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, it really does look like the DUP-ERG alliance will hold firm and May’s deal will go down to another historic defeat.
That’s why, as the Times reports, some Brexiteers are urging May to pull the vote, or at least make it conditional on a new legal guarantee being given. The problem is that a ‘Brady 2’ amendment really wouldn’t take us much further forward, unless it had specifics on what those legal guarantees should look like. With the EU summit due a week on Thursday, some in No.10 and on the Tory backbenches may want to hold off the real ‘meaningful vote’ until after then.
But with so many MPs nervous about no-deal, the backlash from Parliament would be very strong indeed if there was any attempt to avoid the votes. Oliver Letwin, Dominic Grieve and Yvette Cooper (more below) and others may move to seize control of the agenda. They know that time is running out for their own plan to let MPs decide their own timetable. So, if tomorrow’s vote goes ahead and May is defeated, will she overshadow the Wednesday Spring Statement even more with a bumper day of votes, including one on no-deal and on delay? Some May loyalists whisper that the latter could be amended in intriguing ways (with the help of the ERG) to buy May one more week.
May won that famous pre-Christmas, Tory party vote of confidence last year, by 200 votes to 117. Strictly speaking, she’s safe until next December as Tory rules forbid another vote for a whole year. Yet in the real world, with a wafer-thin majority, having more than a third of your MPs wanting you to quit is something no PM can ignore.
I know were are immune these days to shocks, but it’s still pretty incredible that two former Cabinet ministers from different wings of the Tory party (Nicky Morgan and Dominic Raab) can suggest their Prime Minister should resign if she makes the wrong move on Brexit this week. Raab said her situation will ‘get even trickier’ if she delays Brexit. Morgan said the Cabinet would have to step in because “I think it would be very difficult for the prime minister to stay in office for very much longer”. She’s already promised not to fight another election. Will May really try to get her Brexit deal through by offering to quit by the end of June, to allow another leader (probably a Brexiteer) to get a better future relationship with the EU? It’s tricky to see how she could make her deal conditional on her departure, rather than just saying ‘I’m going’, Still, it’s the hot chatter right now among some MPs. Let’s see if it’s more than that.
It’s also pretty incredible that May is even considering a free vote on both no-deal and delay votes. This is a fundamental government policy and she’d be saying she lacks the authority to tell her MPs to vote one way or another. Health minister Steve Brine confirmed on the Westminster Hour last night that he was one of the ministers who were ready to quit or be sacked if the PM didn’t offer a free vote on no-deal. “I think a free vote would be very smart,” he said. “I would find it very difficult, actually impossible to be part of a policy that was pursuing actively no deal.”
Meanwhile, the backdrop to all this is a Tory party jockeying for the leadership. In what more resembles a donkey derby than the Grand National, Boris Johnson, Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt and Dominic Raab are all “ready to go”, the Sunday Times reported. Michael Gove (who has a mighty big Daily Mail front page calling for unity) and David Davis are sure to join the field. Matt Hancock is seen as the Cameroons/Osbornites’ last hope. Liz Truss, Leadsom, Gavin Williamson, Brandon Lewis, Esther McVey, Priti Patel, James Cleverly, Tobias Ellwood, Tom Tugendhat, Philip Lee, Justine Greening, Sam Gyimah, Johnny Mercer are all names in the frame too. That’s 20 contenders alone. One Tory insider says: “People feel the bar has been set so low with this prime minister that they might as well have a crack at it and see what happens.” Maybe donkey derby is perhaps the wrong comparison. This is looking like Wacky Races.
What’s been fascinating over the past few months has been the almost Shakespearean drama of Yvette Cooper taking on her oldest political foe. Away from May’s weekly jousts with Corbyn, she’s had to fight a shadow contest against her former opposite number at the Home Office. From skewering Amber Rudd over May’s hostile environment policy to working with Tories to let Parliament take control of the Brexit, Cooper v May has turned into an epic battle.
This morning, in a big speech to the Centre for European Reform this morning, Cooper is savage about May’s ‘reckless’ approach to exit talks. But she also sets out what could happen once Parliament votes on Thursday for a delay to Brexit. She will say that May “should focus on the future partnership rather than getting stuck on the backstop”, that “she should offer indicative votes to test Parliament’s views” and “should publish a proposed mandate for the negotiations on the future partnership and let Parliament put amendments to it”. Cooper knows MPs are in the market for alternatives that could sweep May’s power away from her.
Of course, if we do get a delay, that’s when both the People’s Voters and the Common Market 2.0 crew believe their arguments will finally get the space and force they need. Peter Kyle told HuffPost on Friday he ready to delay his second referendum amendment if MPs felt they wanted another decisive defeat of May’s plan first. “I’m going to get one shot at this and I want to make sure I do justice to the many, many people who are now advocating passionately for this,” he said. Keir Starmer confirmed yesterday that was Labour’s preference, telling SkyNews “there is a strong sense that it should be an up down vote on the deal”.
Meanwhile, Nick Boles is pushing on with the cross-party soft Brexit plans that Corbyn has taken a keen interest in. He and others will launch the Future Relationship Working Groupm, backed by legal experts. If the delay vote goes ahead on Thursday, Boles says he plans to lay an amendment “proposing a Common Market 2.0 Brexit compromise by 18th March”.
Watch this 1959 BBC Panorama interview with Nancy Astor, the first woman MP to take her seat. “Do you think looking back that women are as suited mentally to public life as men?” “In many ways I think they are more suited because they are not so easily flattered, as men are.”
Today Tom Watson’s ‘Future Britain Group’ of Labour MPs is set to have its first meeting, one hour before the PLP’s 6pm weekly gathering. After The Independent Group (TIG) split off, Corbyn pointedly said that any Labour MP “who does not feel consulted is not taking up, in my view, the opportunities that are available”. Clearly, his open-door approach doesn’t feel like that to Watson and others. There is a history of different groupings in Labour of course, from Tribune to Open Labour to Progress to the Campaign Group, to which Corbyn and McDonnell belonged for years.
John McDonnell may be the main speaker at the PLP tonight. After Thursday’s decision by the EHRC to start preliminary proceedings against Labour on anti-Semitism, maybe he’ll follow up his Marr interview, where he said he was hoping the party would “get a clean bill of health about how we are handling things…If there are issues that the EHRC can advise us on, I welcome that.” Charlie Falconer told JewishNews on Friday he was putting on hold his own plans to act as complaints commissioner.
Philip Hammond has deliberately tried to strip down his Spring Statement so it’s basically nowhere near as important as Gordon Brown’s pre-Budget Report (which often acted as a second Budget). The Chancellor’s summer spending review will matter much more, but he is still trying to exploit this Wednesday’s event to hint of more cash if MPs vote for May’s deal (and less cash if they back no-deal).
Overnight, there’s even a trail of new Spring Statement measures to protect the environment and promote biodiversity. He is expected to say he has “heard calls from young people” about the degradation of the planet, and announce a global review of the economic benefits of biodiversity. The Treasury says crop pollinators like bees are worth £680m a year (for a fascinating look at attempts to put a price on nature, check out this RadioLab podcast about bee losses in China). Meanwhile, the Prospect trade union says Hammond could start by reversing cuts to Natural England.
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