“Good morning,” said Theresa May with a weary smile, as she convened a press briefing just after midnight Brussels time. For the EU27, it was certainly a guten Morgen/bonjour/goedemorgen, as they used their collective strength to dictate the terms of the UK’s Brexit timetable.
For May, it was another bad night at the poker table, as her own June 30 deadline for extended EU membership was torn up before her very eyes. There are two new dates instead: if you get your deal through parliament you can stay until May 22; if you don’t, you will have to decide by April 12 to hold Euro elections and face a much longer limbo.
Nearly three years after the Brexit referendum, Brussels is the one “taking back control”.
May’s premiership has been characterised by serial humiliations at the hands of others and one can argue this was just yet another to add to the long list. But many inside and outside her party now think no one makes a fool out of Theresa May better than Theresa May herself. Her personal and political flaws were brutally exposed once more on Thursday, as she was left literally outside the room, waiting for the EU’s orders. That characteristic mix of bluff, bluster and blancmange had left European leaders so unimpressed they decided to seize the agenda themselves.
As she was grilled for 90 long minutes, May had repeatedly refused to offer any Plan B, to explain the rationale for her June deadline or to make clear if she really was ready for no-deal. Of course your opponents are never going to give you a rave review, but it was all too plausible when the BBC’s Katya Adler reported the PM “didn’t perform very well” and “didn’t add anything new to the debate”. Welcome to our world, many British MPs could have yelled.
Both the Financial Times and the Guardian picked up fresh signals yesterday that May really is ready to go down the no-deal route (as revealed by HuffPost UK in February). Still, when asked directly about this last night, she left open the prospect of a longer delay rather than a no-deal. “We need to work with the House to decide how to proceed if we don’t get the deal through,” the PM said.
As I pointed out yesterday, May can’t even get a threatened resignation right, and it’s far from clear in Brussels or London if she really would step aside rather than agree a long extension if her deal fails a third time.
“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me thrice, shame on us all”
Of course, it’s worth pointing out that as much as the EU defended its own position (and avoided a messy emergency summit of its own next week), its “flextension” does offer May a final lifeline to sell her deal to MPs. And in fact the April 12 date has been No.10’s own real private deadline for days now anyway, as it is more aware than anyone that’s the last time legislation can be passed to allow UK participation in the Euro elections.
Yet if her deal is rejected by the Commons a third time, April may indeed prove to be the cruellest month for the PM. MPs may also need to update the old saying: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me thrice, shame on us all.
May-a-culpa
One area where the prime minister did try to change tack last night was on her televised ‘enemies of the people’ rant from just 24 hours earlier. “Last night I expressed my frustrations and I know that MPs are frustrated too – they have difficult jobs to do,” she said. It wasn’t an apology (this is Theresa May we’re talking about), but it was an admission that she had lashed out in a way that was completely counter-productive. Aside from her rhetoric undermining the personal safety of MPs at a febrile time, it was just dreadfully bad politics to alienate the very people she needs to snatch victory from the jaws of Brexit defeat.
The bad blood around was obvious on Wednesday and yesterday in the Commons. As Rob Halfon told the HuffPost UK podcast, the mood in the Commons tea room was worse than at any time in May’s premiership. “The way people were talking, and it doesn’t matter which wing of the party, and it’s either loyalists, Remainers, Leavers, whatever, I think she is going to go soon,” he said. Hardline Eurosceptics are immune to threats, and even an offer to link her deal to her resignation may not be enough now.
“If May’s plan is included in the series of indicative votes, it could emerge as the ‘last man standing’”
Of course, if May does quit she risks ignominy even greater than that heaped on David Cameron after he decided to leave the scene in 2016. The whole point of her being in No.10 was precisely to do the dirty, messy job of cleaning up after him. Thanks to that April deadline, the next fortnight will be crucial. Some MPs think that Parliament finally has a chance to live up to the moment and effectively become the Prime Minister we’ve been missing for years.
What next?
There is one last chance for May to get her deal over the line with a decent majority. She could say this weekend she accepts the amendment from Lisa Nandy and Gareth Snell that would give parliament a direct vote over any future UK-EU trade deal. I’m told government insiders think accepting the Nandy plan could bring as many as 50 Labour MPs over. Given that Labour’s frontbench is also focused on the ‘political declaration’ rather than the ‘withdrawal agreement’, it’s not impossible they could back it too. Don’t forget, Labour has a difficult dilemma too: be seen to vote for a long delay to Brexit (and to Euro elections) or enable a no-deal exit.
Next week, the other alternative plan that is going to dominate events is the Letwin-Grieve-Benn amendment that seeks to finally seize control of the Commons timetable. If May’s plan is included in the series of indicative votes, it could emerge as the ‘last man standing’, rather than the Norway or second referendum options. The big, big question for both Tories and Labour is whether they offer free votes or whip them. That decision will I suspect finally decided what kind of Brexit we all end up with.
On Monday (thanks to another sleeper procedural move set in train by Dominic Grieve), the government will stage its ‘next steps’ debate in the Commons. Watch for whether Labour or others table an amendment that specify changes to the political declaration that would be needed for it support the ‘withdrawal agreement’.
That’s precisely why May will need the DUP (which really is worried about a no-deal threat to Northern Irish farmers) to break the habit of a lifetime and declare this weekend that it is now backing her deal. She desperately needs some momentum before parliament takes the decision out of her hands. And before her party does.