The Waugh Zone Monday March 18, 2019

The five things you need to know about politics today

All eyes are on the DUP today as Theresa May tries once more to get her Parliamentary partners to finally swing behind her Brexit deal, and in the process provide the face-saving cover needed for Tory Brexiteers to join them. The DUP are past masters at maximising their leverage (and they will never forget the way they were ignored by May over the original ‘backstop’ back in December 2017). But if a package of measures can be presented as substantial and new, they could give the PM the last-minute boost she needs ahead of the planned third attempt at her deal tomorrow.

It’s not going to be easy. Key elements of the package seem to include two things previously dismissed by the DUP as insufficient (the ‘Stormont lock’ idea of giving Northern Ireland more say over the future UK-EU trade deal got a thumbs down late last year) or legally dubious (lawyers on all sides say the Vienna Convention exit mechanism is unlikely to work). Hard cash could do the trick, though both the DUP and Treasury want to reduce the naked nature of the pork barrel.  On Marr, Philip Hammond said ‘this isn’t about money’, before suggesting it really was: “We will have to look at all budgets, including devolved block-grant budgets, in the spending review.” There’s talk of air passenger tax cuts for the province too. Former First Minister David Trimble overnight wrote a Policy Exchange piece claiming May had secured ‘substantive changes’ to the vexed Northern Ireland backstop.

Of course, getting the DUP on board is a necessary but not sufficient condition for May’s deal to pass through the Commons. Scots Tory Ross Thomson said yesterday “I’m not a member of the DUP” (though he added the crucial caveat that he ‘will be happy to suck up a lot of the other stuff’ if the DUP are happy). Jacob Rees-Mogg’s retreat seems priced in (he told LBC ‘a bad deal is better than staying in the EU’), but other Tories (see below) are just not folding. In fact, Hammond’s other main Marr message was a warning that tomorrow’s vote may be pulled if it looks like losing. “We are not just going to keep presenting it if we haven’t moved the dial,” the Chancellor said. I have to say few people really buy that. One Cabinet minster told me it was ‘highly unlikely’ May would pull the vote before the EU summit. She needs to show momentum and has to present to the EU27 with some evidence of that. Even if she loses tomorrow, she may get the numbers whittled down enough to persuade Brussels she’s close.

The PM’s voice is on the mend, I’m told, and she could even make a fresh Commons statement today to shift that DUP dial. We will find out by close of play tonight if there is to be a ‘meaningful vote 3’ tomorrow. Even if the PM gets her deal through this week, it’s just the first step on a long and winding road. Former Foreign Office permanent secretary Simon Fraser has tweeted this weekend on the path ahead, including why we should expect more ‘economic interventionism’ from the Tories.

 

Last week, Tory maverick Christopher Chope was so furious with May that he warned he would “seriously consider” joining Labour to support a no-confidence vote in the government. This weekend, the Mail on Sunday revealed there were up to 15 other Tories ready to form a ‘suicide squad’ to back the Chope plan. Don’t rule out Corbyn trying again for force a confidence vote if May does indeed fail again this week. Just as the PM was winning over key switchers, what incensed some Brexiteers was the heavy-handed tactics of some in No.10.

Many were offended by the implication in the PM’s Sunday Telegraph article that it would be ‘unpatriotic’ not to vote for her motion this week. Iain Duncan Smith, who has been very closely involved in attempts to get a revised deal, expressed his frustration in a WhatsApp group that No.10 were suggesting he would follow the DUP into folding: “Robbie Gibb [the PM’s spin chief] is in overdrive. However he risks crashing the car”.

The real goal of many in the European Research Group (ERG) of backbenchers is to get ‘proper  Brexit’ delivered. And their price for voting with May this week is that she should state she will step down to let someone else do the delivery of the next stage, the UK-EU trade deal. BuzzFeed’s Alex Wickham (who’s having a good war) reports that May has in recent days been given the message that she should confirm her resignation intension. I loved the way she reacted ‘with surprise’ at the suggestion. One Cabinet minister tells me it just isn’t in the PM’s nature to link her own departure to her deal. “I don’t think that is her style,” they say.

Some Cabinet ministers who back compromise in the name of unity may get some plaudits from party members. But there is certainly a cachet among activists, and the Leave-voting public, for any leadership contender who outright opposes May’s deal under all circumstances. A leaner (he’s lost several pounds), meaner Boris Johnson, who is vociferous today in the Telegraph in his opposition, leads the pack of Brexiteer refuseniks. Dominic Raab (who could yet get more MPs than Boris to get on the leadership ballot paper) and Priti Patel (outlining her leadership credentials at an event today) are not buckling either. Esther McVey, who is backing May, even floated her own leadership ambitions on SkyNews.

 
 

Labour’s own problems on Brexit were laid bare by Jeremy Corbyn’s Sophy Ridge interview, where he sounded singularly unenthusiastic about a second referendum. Today, Corbyn is meeting a range of MPs from other parties in a bid to discuss ways forward, and it still feels as if everything from a People’s Vote to a Common Market 2.0 are all still on the table.  Tonight, Keir Starmer is set to address the PLP to give an update on what the party’s stance actually is ahead of tomorrow’s planned ‘meaningful vote 3’.

As for that second referendum, the principal actors have been Labour backbenchers Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, whose amendment commits Parliament to only endorsing May’s deal if the public have done so in a new vote. The ‘confirmatory ballot’ amendment looks a long way short of getting the Labour MPs needed to pass, even if Corbyn whips for it. If last week was ‘too soon’ to test the water on this, this week doesn’t look to have moved much on it either. In an uncanny echo of May’s tactics, some think that getting ‘momentum’ (small m) behind the second vote amendment will be vital if it is to pass in any future indicative votes round. Yet as with May’s deal, a blocking minority could hold all the cards.

There are further problems. Corbyn said again yesterday “we’re not supporting Theresa May’s deal at all”. There was even a hint from some Labour source that the party would not whip on the amended main motion, though this seems to misunderstand that there is actually no difference between an amendment and a motion as amended. More difficult is the current wording of Kyle-Wilson, which lacks any reference to Remain being on the ballot paper. It current seems to suggest it will be a referendum with the options of May’s deal or no-deal. Of course, any referendum question will be up to the Electoral Commission but Labour MPs may want some tweaks to the amendment today to put it in line with the all-important PLP briefing of last month. 

Meanwhile, May knows that if there is a hardcore of 25 Tory Brexiteers who won’t back her deal, she needs around 25 Labour MPs from Leave areas. Which is why it seems self-defeating for the government to have abandoned plans for citizens’ juries and local ballots, innovations that people like Lisa Nandy have long called for. The Times reports ministers got cold feet in January when Nandy and Stella Creasy called for a citizens’ assembly to break the logjam on Brexit by evaluating the options in a neutral way.

Watch this guy take vigilante action against a littering motorist. No idea if it was staged or real, but boy it looked satisfying

 

For many, New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinta Ardern has in recent days shown what real leadership looks like. From her personal embrace of families of victims of the Christchurch terror attack to her new announcement of gun control laws and a review of security processes, she has not put a foot wrong in what are truly awful circumstances.

Some gun-owners are voluntarily handing in their weapons. Still, Ardern’s critics fear that gun curbs are a knee-jerk reaction, and the shopkeeper who sold weapons to white supremacist Brenton Tarrant claimed yesterday:  “We are not a country of emotional responses, we are a country of laws”. Yet maybe, just maybe, it’s possible to combine emotional responses and cool-headed assessment of risks at the same time.

 

Even if May gets her Brexit deal through in coming weeks, she will at some point have to return to the difficult business of reversing the impact the 9-year-long spending squeeze on public services, including the NHS. Today, our northern correspondent Aasma Day has the story of how one bed in the Royal Blackburn Hospital was used and re-used as the health service struggled to cope with pressures on social care and A&E. A week in the life of Bed Number 4 is well worth your time today.

 
 

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