She has left it very, very late, but Theresa May has finally realised that she needs Jeremy Corbyn to help her deliver Brexit. The brute maths of our Parliamentary arithmetic forced her last night to execute the pivot that many in her Cabinet had hoped for, but not expected. It’s going to make for a heck of a weird PMQs, as both leaders need to be polite while not revealing the rest of their negotiating hands.
I’ve written HERE on how May used the long Cabinet meeting to essentially declare she no longer wants to be the hostage of her backbench Brexiteers. Ever since entering No.10, she has sought to placate and woo them. In a political version of Stockholm syndrome, her dependence on her captors was a form of survival. When she last tried to break free, by winning a big majority in a snap election, the prison walls ended up getting even higher.
Perhaps the most remarkable upshot of yesterday’s big judgement call is that May’s own ‘Brexit means Brexit’ mantra has been reduced to what it probably meant all along: any kind of Brexit, soft, hard or poached, is my bare minimum duty as PM. And just getting our EU exit across the line has also been the big call made by Michael Gove, architect of Vote Leave. He has long decided that the grown-up thing to do is get out first then try to improve the terms later.
Gove was a driving force in Cabinet yesterday in pushing this central argument, and its inevitable consequence that Labour had to be at least made an offer to break the Parliamentary deadlock. Nick Boles, a friend and admirer of Gove, yesterday said the Cabinet was ‘cowardly and selfish’ and none of its members was fit to be a future leader. Last night, his tone was markedly different.
On the Today programme, Brexit secretary Steve Barclay made clear there were no preconditions for the talks but no blank cheque either. Barclay, who has impressed his colleagues of late, was also firm on how to answer all the cries of ‘betrayal’ and ‘traitor’ being lobbed the Cabinet’s way: “I would use one word back: numbers,” he said.
Just a few weeks ago, May had been thinking of going down the no-deal route to hold her party together. Now she’s gambling that just delivering Brexit, any Brexit, is actually in the long-term interests of the Conservatives. A chaotic no-deal risked trashing the party’s reputation for years, one Cabinet minister told me yesterday. Will the Tory grassroots just be relieved to get out of the EU? They might? Will they reward Gove with the leadership, or prefer the harder rhetoric offered by Boris Johnson? That’s all a way off. From today, May’s real risk is that she’s swapped her Brexiteer captors for Labour ones.
It was the DUP who put their finger on it last night. In a tersely-worded statement, the Northern Irish party said: “It remains to be seen if sub-contracting out the future of Brexit to Jeremy Corbyn, someone whom the Conservatives have demonised for four years, will end happily.” This was exactly the argument used in Cabinet by Gavin Williamson, the former chief whip who engineered the confidence-and-supply deal that squeaked a Commons majority for May in 2017.
May’s big offer to the Labour leader gives him credibility and authority like never before. At a stroke, the Tories have lost their big weapon at the next election: you can’t trust Corbyn. If you can’t trust him, why invite him in for talks and give him a central role on the biggest policy decision of our generation?
The unlikely pair meet today. Few around Corbyn expect him to take up May’s first offer, of some kind of joint agreement. But he could well accept her second offer to produce a set of proposals that can be put before MPs in a kind of run-off of all the options. One of the most surprising things last night was the clear hint from No.10 sources that May was even prepared to countenance a second referendum (the only hard red line left is ‘revocation’). That means Corbyn too will have to decide just how important his party policy is on a People’s Vote (he made no mention of it in his instant reaction last night). There’s a suspicion both of them have a common interest in letting MPs vote on the referendum plan, but in the knowledge it’s too soon for it to get a majority.
The serious fear of some around Corbyn is that he could be walking into a Tory trap. Would a Boris Johnson-led Tory party be bound by anything agreed this week? No.10 told us last night “there is a legal link between the Withdrawal Agreement and the political declaration”. Which Labour aides say is the exact opposite of what May argued on the phone to Corbyn last week as she sought to de-couple the divorce deal from the trade talks.
The biggest risk is this: being seen as an ‘enabler’ of Brexit, even a softer one, would make Labour Leave voters happy but could spark a revolt among the party grassroots. Still, Corbyn has the general election card up his sleeve. He knows Tory Brexiteers are furious with May. And that some of them may even join him in a no-confidence vote to oust her. Again, however, it’s a tricky balancing act. Imagine the confidence vote hastening a Boris premiership rather than an election?
It’s a sign of how fast-moving our politics is these days that Yvette Cooper’s big Brexit announcement early yesterday was so rapidly overtaken by May’s gamble. In many ways, though, the PM’s latest play has been forced on her by an assertive Parliament and by the Labour and Tory ‘grandees’ who have pressed on the bruise that is her lack of an outright Tory majority. Will the immediate impact of May’s statement be to stop in its tracks today’s seizing of the Order Paper by Cooper and Oliver Letwin?
Either or both could withdraw their business statement, or MPs may be so spooked by the May-Corbyn talks that they think now is not the time for a fast-tracked bill forcing the PM’s hand. I wrote a story-behind-the-story yesterday on how the ‘grandees’ had decided to push for a longer extension, because they feared the Commons’s lack of a majority for any form of Brexit made no-deal a real and present danger.
Now that May has effectively tried to take no-deal off the table, the pressure may have eased. But many MPs are sceptical and want concrete reassurances that May’s own ‘indicative’ votes plan is better than their own. It’s still possible the paving motion will get approved today, setting up a run-off vote on Monday (thanks to Hilary Benn’s amendment). Cooper, who has long been May’s political nemesis, gave a cautious welcome to the apparent U-turn in tactics. She is waiting to see “how decisions will be taken about the length and purpose of an extension, and how indicative votes will work to make sure we don’t just end up with No Deal a bit later on.”
Sir Mick Jagger has had to postpone the Rolling Stones US tour, but maybe he should get Bill Gates to fill in for him. Watch this glorious footage of the Microsoft leadership dancing to Start Me Up at the launch of Windows95.
To get a clue to what the future of a party will look like, it’s often helpful to check out Cabinet ministers’ Parliamentary aides (known as PPSs). Will Huw Merriman, the Chancellor’s helper, has been recently signalling he is open to a second referendum on Brexit (yesterday his boss floated the once unthinkable idea in Cabinet). But yesterday he also laid bare on BBC5Live just what a toll the last few months had taken on his waistline. He’s gone from size 34 trousers to size 30.
Away from Brexit, a truly jaw-dropping (but highly revealing) remark by a senior judge sparked a backlash yesterday. Mr Justice Hayden declared: “I cannot think of any more obviously fundamental human right than the right of a man to have sex with his wife.” Labour’s Thangham Debbonaire said the comment “legitimises misogyny and woman hatred”, and Jess Phillips tweeted “it is not even close to a right”. Don’t forget it was only in 1991 that case law on rape was changed to remove a ‘marital exemption’. And it was only in 2003 the law explicitly insisted a husband required consent from his wife for sex.
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