With the political eyes of the nation upon him, Jacob Rees-Mogg took to Twitter this morning: ‘Dies iræ, dies illa’, he wrote, somewhat cryptically.
What does it mean? No, seriously: what does it mean? Perhaps Rees-Mogg was simply giving politicos a taster – a soupçon as he might put it – of how large parts of the general public feel about the entire Brexit process: frustrated, bewildered, excluded.
This evening, sometime around 7pm, the Prime Minister will attempt to get her Brexit deal through Parliament again. If she succeeds, the UK will be leaving the EU in a few weeks’ time, with a deal. Brexit will have been delivered. But having seen her deal crushed by 230 votes last time she brought it to the House, there isn’t much optimism.
The PM is hoping that the clarifications and changes she has obtained from the EU commission on the Northern Ireland backstop will win over her many doubters. Early indications aren’t good. The Democratic Unionist Party and Tory eurosceptics in the European Research Group have similar but distinct reasons for wanting an exit mechanism from the backstop and neither is convinced that the PM has secured that. Without backing from either group, the PM’s success or otherwise boils down to how many of those Tories are looking for an excuse to vote for her deal versus how many are happy luxuriating in the warmer waters of saying ‘no, no, no.’ How these MPs vote will shape not just the next few weeks and months but the Tory battles of years to come: a generation of eurosceptics who will forever be divided into wets – those who move to support the deal - and dries – those who hang on until the bitter end.
What of Labour? At the first meaningful vote in January, just three Labour MPs supported the Prime Minister. There is little reason to expect significant change in their numbers. The guarantees offered last week on workers’ rights were met with a shrug and a scoff by most of the party’s MPs; the PM’s offer of extra cash for leave-voting constituencies was a disaster that hardened opposition to her deal. The truth is that most Labour MPs don’t like Brexit, don’t trust the Prime Minister and don’t believe that any future Tory government would honour these pledges. For Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s frontbench, another defeat for the government would allow them to vote against a no-deal Brexit tomorrow and for a short extension to Article 50 on Thursday, while pushing their alternative approach: a softer version of Brexit.
For those Labour supporters who desperately want the party to start campaigning for a People’s Vote, the change in policy they desire remains like the fruit on the branch dangling over Tantalus – another allusion which might appeal to Rees-Mogg ― mouth-wateringly close but forever just out of reach.
If the Prime Minister loses the vote tonight – and every indication is that she will – think Reservoir Dogs. All options to avoid a no-deal exit - a delay to Brexit, the Norway model, Labour’s approach, a People’s Vote – will be locked in a Mexican standoff, guns trained on one another, reluctant to be the first to fire, desperate not to be taken out. The aim is to be Mr. Pink: the last man standing as the other options are eliminated one by one. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Maiora premunt.
Paul Ovenden is director of iNHouse Communications and a former Labour spokesman