There’s an old poker phrase that states ‘if you look around the table and you can’t see who the mug is, the mug is you’. Ever since she became Prime Minister, Theresa May has proved herself a spectacularly bad card player.
Yes, she was dealt an awful hand by a Cameron referendum that told us what the country didn’t want (the EU) but not what it did want (the alternative to the EU). But from triggering Article 50 too early to her disastrous snap election, she’s been the author of her own misfortune.
Unable to read her opponents inside or outside the Tory party and incapable of working out a sustainable strategy, she’s bet big and lost repeatedly. After last night’s shattering, second rejection her Brexit plans (the fourth largest defeat of any British prime minister in history), it looks to many as if the game is up.
And yet May still sits in No.10 Downing Street, largely because of the indecision of others. Her party voted to keep her as leader as recently as December. Her Cabinet and the backbench 1922 committee have so far shown no inclination to do what was done so brutally to Margaret Thatcher, to troop into her office and say it’s time to go.
Most importantly of all, Parliament itself has failed to decide what kind of Brexit it wants, as opposed to what it doesn’t want. Today, MPs are expected to rule out a no-deal exit and tomorrow we may get a short delay to the UK’s planned departure from the EU. Yet the much tougher calls are yet to come. As the PM herself put it last night, the ‘unenviable choices’ (of revoking Article 50, of a second referendum, of her deal or some kind of softer Brexit) “must now be faced”.
May is correct that it’s now up to Parliament to do its worst (or best). But in effectively saying ‘it’s your problem now, you sort it’, she faces the charge that she’s abdicating a Prime Minister’s central responsibility to lead rather than to follow. It’s often said that May has no ego, that she puts herself through all the pain and humiliation out of a deep sense of public service and duty. Yet her belief that she is the only one who can chart a way through the thicket may be running dry.
After the 2017 election defeat that made her a political hostage of the DUP, May told MPs: “I got us into this mess and I’ll get us out of it”. The mess is even bigger now and the (poker) chips are down. As one of her sharper new MPs put it only last year: stamina is no substitute for strategy. Her Cabinet may soon conclude, once Brexit is delayed, the only way out is by forcing her out.
It’s not the despair, it’s the hope that kills you. Yesterday morning, May and her No.10 team started the day actually thinking she could squeeze a victory for her deal. Both Jacob Rees-Mogg and the DUP sounded ready to swing behind her plans. As Steve Baker confirmed on the Today programme today, he and others were “yearning” to support May as late as 10am yesterday. But once again, the PM had pre-cooked her own defeat, this time by making the crucial error of thinking she could turn Brexit into a legal rather than a political issue. It was yet another panicked, last minute blunder to add to all her others.
On Monday, Geoffrey Cox was up all night drafting his legal opinion on the deal struck in Strasbourg. May had believed he would come up with a nuanced verdict that could help her win over Nigel Dodds and the Brexiteers. Cox proved her very wrong. Yes there was the helpful stuff about alternative arrangements, but everyone focused on the brutal final paragraph announcing no legal way out of the backstop. Ministers, including the PM, got the note just minutes before the Cabinet meeting and jaws dropped when they saw it. It turned out that Channel 4’s Jon Snow was right about the Attorney General’s legal advice. What turned out to be ‘bollocks’ was the claim that he was being forced to change his mind.
Despite that, despite looking tired from a 2.30am arrival back in the UK, despite a cold that made her hoarse, May arrived at yesterday’s meeting of Tory MPs in Portcullis House still thinking her deal had a chance. Some loyalists like George Freeman claimed there was ‘a big migration of wildebeests’ and MPs were switching to back her. But as May spoke, Eurosceptic MPs lined up to read out the Cox advice that had just landed online, and the PM had no answers. “It’s shit or bust that’s what it’s come down to,” loyalist Keith Simpson told me. It proved to be the former.
The next sign that things were heading the wrong way was the appearance of May’s husband Philip in the Commons gallery. He arrived early and sat unsmiling as Cox did his Rumpole of the Bailey act below, and left only after seeing his wife make a final, croaky stab at persuading her MPs. With brutal timing, the DUP released its own statement opposing May’s plans just minutes after she rose at the despatch box. Hours later, after the 149-vote defeat was announced, the PM looked like a dejected and broken figure slumped on the frontbench.
Labour managed to keep its rebels down to just three MPs (Caroline Flint is now the most expensive MP in the Commons, having won £1.6bn for small towns, a rate-per-member that exceeds even the DUP’s cost). However, it was the European Research Group’s shadow whip operation that delivered the defeat, with 75 Tories voting against. The government whips office was fuelled by Greggs sausage rolls, while their Labour rivals munched on Krispy Kreme donuts yesterday. But the ERG feeds on raw, red meat. Through her rigid red lines on Brexit, May has tried to feed the beast but has discovered - like Major and Cameron before her - that it can always bite her arm off.
One MP who emerged from the crunch ERG meeting yesterday said the mood in the meeting was “realistic”, before adding: “But the question is, what is reality?” Today, will everyone get a reality check or will fantasies on all sides continue? As the Brexiteers face the prospect of MPs ruling out no-deal, many are warning they’ve blown it. One Cabinet minister told me yesterday: “Today, we may have seen the high water mark for a hard Brexit. Parliament is likely to vote for something softer, if allowed that choice.” Nick Boles tweeted a dire warning yesterday: “We are just as committed to our cause as you are to yours…with our friends on the opposition benches there are many more of us than you.” This morning, Tory deputy chairman James Cleverly said the ERG “may have missed the best and last chance to deliver Brexit”.
Underlining her loss of authority, May is allowing a free vote today. She will vote for her own motion, which strangely declines to approve no-deal while insisting it is the legal default. The amendments to watch in tonight’s vote are a) from Caroline Spelman and Jack Dromey and f) from Damian Green and Iain Duncan Smith. Yet there are major problems with both. The Spelman one simply repeats the wording of her previous amendment the Commons has already voted for, and has no more legal or practical force. To stop no-deal, Parliament needs legislation to either formally revoke Article 50 or change the March 29 exit date though a statutory instrument.
The main problem with the Green amendment is that it lacks support, with many ministers likely to avoid it. Still, it is the first time formally that Brexiteers have contemplated a delay to Brexit (May 22 in this case) and gives a pointer to the kind of extension that will win support tomorrow. The wording of that extension motion is still a mystery and has to answer the EU’s charge that it can’t be just about timetables, it has to include a reason for the extension. Yvette Cooper and Oliver Letwin may have to somehow amend tomorrow’s motion to allow indicative votes on everything from Common Market 2.0 to a second referendum.
There is still strong chat within government that May wants a ‘meaningful vote 3’, possibly as early as Monday night and certainly before the EU summit next week. Some ministers think ‘MV3’ could well be contained within a series of indicative votes, where her ragged and tattered deal ends up as the last man standing. But contrary to the belief of many of her Brexiteer MPs, the PM doesn’t think Brussels has any more to offer and thinks her deal is as good as it gets. One Remainer Cabinet minister told me: “What Juncker said about this being it, no more clarifications of clarifications, is right. I think she thinks there’s nothing further to extract from the EU.”
Watch Emily Maitlis’ supreme side-eye on Newsnight last night, perhaps summing up the nation’s view of how MPs of all stripes have handled Brexit
At 7am this morning, the government produced two documents to focus minds on what would really happen in a no-deal outcome. Under a temporary scheme, 87% of imports by value would be eligible for zero-tariff access, slashing rates for non-EU countries but protecting industries like car manufacture, ceramics and farming. As for the Northern Ireland border, there would be no new checks at all on goods. A smuggler’s paradise, a headache for Brussels but also a filip to Brexiteers.
Before all the Brexit action, we have PMQs. And there is then the small matter of the Chancellor’s Spring Statement. Its demotion to side-show is a neat symbol of how the economy has taken second billing amid the procedural wrangling, but it is also a welcome relief from everyone having to pretend that this is anything like a major fiscal event akin to a Budget. Hammond’s lines how a no-deal would starve the country of funds is what’s likely to feature most.
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