Yesterday, there was a real weariness about the House of Commons, with little movement in the front lines on the Brexit battlefield. There was an eerie calm, almost as if everyone was sitting in the trenches bracing themselves for the main action was today. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn addressed their troops in private meetings in the Commons and the mood in both was decidedly flat, with neither leader managing a stirring rallying cry to action.
But May is the one who is of course most in the firing line from 7pm, when the Commons starts its historic votes on her Brexit deal. The Speaker is due mid-morning to announce which amendments he’s selected and we may get just three amendments - Labour’s, SNP’s and Tory MP Andrew Murrison’s - based on the amount of signatories they have. That would mean the Big Vote result about 8.20pm.
There is also, of course, a difference between being calm and being becalmed, and No.10 is desperate to show that there has been some momentum in her favour. With their main strategy now to keep the defeat down to a level manageable to allow a second vote, May’s allies were delighted that another Tory Brexiteer Knight of the realm, Sir Des Swayne, hinted last night he could back her plan.
The blood-curdling predictions (in lots of papers and on the BBC) of a defeat by more than 200 votes may well be overblown. Scores of unhappy Tory MPs may well abstain, rather than vote with Labour against the deal. The European Research Group is pretty well-disciplined and has a ‘rock solid’ 39 votes against, but above that it’s unclear. Former No.10 aide Nikki da Costa thinks the overall defeat could be down to ’50-80’.
May wants a sense of progress in getting the numbers down and something to work with in going back to Brussels for more concessions. The real issue is the rebellion has to be big enough to scare the EU into action but not so big that it thinks anything it offers won’t make a difference. There’s chatter that after a defeat, a new UK-EU ‘joint legislative document’ could be drafted to give fresh way to clarify the legal limits on the vexed backstop.
When the PM gets up after the defeat at the despatch box, she may well give a brief response that she will go away and consider the result and come back with her formal statement (as required under the EU Withdrawal Act). One option is for her to make that statement on the steps of No.10 (without MPs jeering her every word) tonight or tomorrow morning. She may decide to tough it out and do it in the Commons itself. Either way, I’m told that there is one plan in place for her to surprise her critics by inviting other party leaders to Downing Street to show she’s reaching out.
There was lots of frantic speculation in Whitehall and Westminster yesterday, with texts between some spads and officials pinging around about May preparing for a general election or a second referendum. Some in Cabinet will again today urge her to agree a series of ‘indicative votes’ in the Commons. That’s not ruled out. But with the PM, past performance is often a guide to the future and it’s likely that she will want to put her tweaked plan back a third time. For her, this is a war of attrition. The question is just how long Parliament and the EU will let it continue.
For Jeremy Corbyn, his big decision is whether to table his vote of confidence in the PM immediately tonight or to wait until tomorrow, allowing the overnight headlines to be dominated by May’s big defeat. That decision is his, not the Shadow Cabinet’s or anyone else’s. Last night, May warned her backbenchers that if her deal was not passed, she expected Corbyn to table a rolling series of confidence votes and contempt motions.
As it happens, that’s exactly what some allies of the Labour leader are indeed planning. It took six confidence votes in the 1970s before the minority government lost, and there’s nothing in the fixed-term parliament act that precludes multiple attempts. If the confidence vote were to be held this week, it would fail. But some insiders think that if it was delayed or another one took place in a fortnight amid continuing Parliamentary deadlock, there may then be some Tory MPs who could think the unthinkable to stop a no-deal Brexit.
Yet with many assuming a confidence vote will fail, the bigger issue is just whether Corbyn allows a second referendum. And as I report HERE, judging from the aftermath of last night’s PLP meeting, People’s Vote campaigners should not get their hopes up. The party’s tortuously-crafted conference policy states: “If we cannot get a general election, Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote.” But a spokesman for Corbyn told us last night: “A public vote is one of the options, it [the conference policy] doesn’t say it’s the preferred option or the default option.”
And it gets worse for the People’s Vote types. The spokesman said: “There won’t be a mechanism to consult the membership on every twist and turn in Parliament. That’s not possible.” I’m told that calls for a ‘special conference’, to work out which ‘options’ should be taken, are seen as impractical. The idea of online or email consultation of members is also ruled out. Corbyn held one over the Syria vote, but Brexit is not such a ‘binary issue’, sources tell me. Allies of JC add that recent YouGov polls of the membership have been ‘misrepresented’. Yes, they show members want to either Remain or have a second referendum, but they also show by two-to-one that they back Corbyn’s approach.
Critics will see that as proof that Corbyn will do anything to avoid a People’s Vote, partly because of his own lifelong scepticism the EU, partly to keep hold of Labour Leave votes in key marginals and heartlands. One can imagine Corbyn preferring a Norway-style Brexit to no Brexit at all. But there will have to come a point of reckoning on this very soon. Some senior aides and allies like Diane Abbott think Corbyn’s instincts are right, but John McDonnell and others can see the damage to the party’s brand if it fails to push for a new vote on Brexit.
John Bercow is the other key player on Brexit of course. And yesterday he was back on loud and combative form as Tory MPs lined up for yet another point of order-fest. As he demanded a proxy vote for Tulip Siddiq (the pregant Labour MP who has delayed her caesarian section to attend tonight’s vote), what struck me was his attack on “reactionary forces” who opposed such reforms.
But there was much more to come, as he lost his patience with Tory MPs pointing to reports of a ‘plot’ by him and Dominic Grieve, Nick Boles and others to derail Brexit through changes to Parliamentary procedure. In a dramatic outburst at May, ministers and government whips (see below) he believes have orchestrated recent attempts to undermine him, Bercow said: “I will stand up for the rights of the House of Commons and I will not be pushed around by agents of the executive branch. They can be as rude as they like, they can be as intimidating as they like, they can spread as much misinformation as they like, it won’t make the slightest bit of difference to my continuing and absolute determination to serve the House of Commons.”
Parliament and all its parties and factions are all divided right now. Last night, likeminded Tories Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry, Nick Boles, Justine Greening and Dominic Grieve held a friendly meeting but it broke up with no agreement on tactics, one present told me. But the Boles plan is clearly having some effect on Labour and others. Despite its cack-handed conception (Sarah Wollaston was not squared) and poor initial drafting (revoking Article 50 was too extreme), it may be in a better place when he presents it formally around midday.
The Boles plan was strong enough to persuade Hilary Benn this morning to withdraw his own no-deal amendment. He accepted that (as previewed here last year), the risk was a small rather than a big defeat for the PM. But Benn told Today ”someone is going to have to take responsibility” and the bill could be amended later. One People’s Vote backer tells me it’s just a way to ‘gently kill’ a fresh referendum, adding: ‘Boles and Morgan (I like them both) are close associates of Michael Gove…JC will acquiesce because he’s anti-PV’. As for today’s other . amendments, see this must-read blog from constitutional expert Jack Simson Caird.
A Cabinet minister tells me: “This week is relatively predictable. The [meaningful] vote will be lost, the no confidence vote will be lost, then the government will be required to come back with a response. The markets may be quite calm on the basis that the potential for no-deal is shrinking every day. We are past the point of hardest Brexit. As every day passes, we are heading to a softer Brexit.” Let’s see. It may not be the Boles plan, but something like it, that allows MPs to guarantee no-deal, while coalescing around a Norway-style Brexit is where we end up in three weeks’ time.
Watch John Bercow let rip at his critics in the Commons.
Today, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox (aka Mufasa) will open the debate for the government. Last night, Chancellor Philip Hammond had the joy of closing on the graveyard shift in the early hours. But he said something on the Northern Irish backstop that may give the DUP even more cause to come back on board for the PM (she was unusually provocative towards them yesterday, raising the prospect of a border poll).
Put to him by Sir John Hayes that ‘every insurance policy is time-limited’, Hammond replied with a barb. “I do not know how much engagement my right hon. Friend has with the insurance industry, but it would baulk at the notion that an insurance policy is time-limited. If someone is covered by an insurance policy against the acquisition of some terrible disease, such as asbestosis, it may be 10 or 20 years later that they discover they are a sufferer. They would expect the insurance put in place to cover them.” Stick that in your pipe, Nigel Dodds?
And another eye-catching contribution last night in the debate came from Boris Johnson. He actually signed up to the ‘deep state’ idea that many Tories ridiculed only a few months ago when it was uttered by Unite aide Andrew Murray. For good measure, Boris attacked ‘public school’ tactics used in Parliament of late.
If Article 50 is extended, Boris warned that . Leavers would “conclude that there was some plot by the deep state to kill Brexit…That is what many people would conclude, and that is precisely why we cannot now treat the public as idiots and get snarled in delectable disputations about Standing Order No. 14, because they will see this stuff for what it is: public school debating society chicanery designed to get round their wishes.”
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