May hopes to hold fourth vote on Brexit deal
Election also on the cards after MPs reject withdrawal
agreement by 58 votes
How did each MP vote?
Heather Stewart and Jessica Elgot
Fri 29 Mar 2019 18.55 GMT First published on Fri 29 Mar 2019
14.42 GMT
MPs vote against Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement
for third time – video
Theresa May hopes to bring her Brexit deal back to
parliament again next week after it was rejected for a third time by MPs – and
appears poised to trigger a general election if parliament fails to agree a way
forward.
Despite the embattled prime minister’s dramatic promise on
Wednesday that she would hand over the keys to 10 Downing Street if her Tory
colleagues backed the withdrawal agreement, parliament voted against it on
Friday, by 344 to 286.
The Commons vote was held on the day when Britain was meant
to be leaving the European Union, as Parliament Square outside overflowed with
raucous pro-Brexit protesters.
A string of leave-supporting Conservative backbenchers who
had twice rejected the deal, including Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and
former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, switched sides to support the agreement.
But with Labour unwilling to shift its position, and the Democratic Unionist
party’s 10 MPs implacably opposed, it was not enough to secure a majority for May.
The result was a sense of stunned disbelief in Westminster.
Asked what could happen next, one government source said: “Last one out, turn
off the lights.”
Immediately after the defeat was announced, May told MPs:
“The implications of the house’s decision are grave. The legal default now is
that the United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union on 12 April. In just
14 days’ time.”
Under the deal agreed by EU leaders in Brussels last week,
if May had passed her withdrawal agreement this week, Brexit would have been
delayed until 22 May. Now, she will have to return to Brussels for an emergency
European council summit on 10 April.
The EU27 expect her to ask for a longer delay – requiring
Britain to participate in the European elections in May – or accept a no-deal
Brexit two days later. However, her aides hope the 22 May date could still be
in play if her deal is accepted next week.
May did not spell out explicitly what she planned to do
next, saying only that she would press ahead with an “orderly Brexit”. However,
it became increasingly clear after the vote that Downing Street does not
believe the deal is dead.
The prime minister pointed to MPs’ plans to hold a second
round of indicative votes on Monday, “to see if there is a stable majority for
a particular alternative version of our future relationship with the EU”.
But she told MPs: “I fear we are reaching the limits of this
process in this house.” Many regarded that as a warning that if they supported
an option she was not prepared to implement, or failed to reach agreement on an
alternative, she was ready to call a general election.
Government sources suggested she was first likely to make
another attempt to force her deal through parliament in a third “meaningful
vote”. This might happen in a “run-off” against any successful alternative from
Monday’s indicative votes.
The government has been discussing with the Speaker, John
Bercow, whether there is a way to hold MV3 that would not fall foul of his
insistence that the same proposition cannot be put before parliament again.
A Downing Street spokesman highlighted the fact that May’s
margin of defeat, 58, was smaller than the 149 majority she lost by earlier
this month, and the crushing 230-strong defeat in the first meaningful vote in
January. “We are at least going in the right direction,” the spokesman said.
No 10 sources also pointed out that her deal had won more
supporters than any of the eight options considered by MPs in Wednesday’s
indicative votes, in which the most popular, a referendum, received the backing
of 268 MPs.
Backers of the various alternatives were discussing how to
build a proposition that could command a majority on Monday. Cabinet ministers
were instructed to abstain in last week’s process, which the government had
initially tried to scupper by whipping MPs to vote against the business motion.
May is likely to come under pressure to offer a free vote to
cabinet supporters of a soft Brexit – the “Gaukward squad” – on Monday.
Jeremy Corbyn responded to the prime minister’s latest
defeat by calling on her to resign and trigger a general election.“If the prime
minister can’t accept that, then she must go, not at an indeterminate date in
the future, but now, so that we can decide the future of this country through a
general election,” the Labour leader said.
He had earlier urged his MPs to reject the deal, warning
that it would lead to a “blindfold Brexit”. Just five Labour MPs voted for the
withdrawal agreement.
Before the vote, May had told MPs that the withdrawal
agreement was the only way to guarantee Brexit and avoid a “cliff edge” in two
weeks’ time. “When the division bell rings in a few moments, every one of us
will have to look into our hearts to decide what is right for our country,” she
said.
Friday’s vote did not technically qualify as a third
“meaningful vote”, because MPs were asked to consider only the withdrawal
agreement, which includes the controversial Irish backstop and secures EU
citizens’ rights and the post-Brexit transition period.
What now for Brexit after May's deal is rejected for third
time?
A look at the possible next steps in the wake of MPs’ latest
rejection of the PM’s deal
Dan Sabbagh
Fri 29 Mar 2019 18.01 GMT Last modified on Sat 30 Mar 2019
00.10 GMT
Is Theresa May’s Brexit deal dead?
Not yet, remarkably. Downing Street was clear after the vote
that the prime minister was prepared to bring her deal back to parliament next
week. But in a new context.
May will allow the indicative votes process to continue on
Monday, which will aim to focus on the most popular options, and this time
could produce something that commands majority support – the realistic
contenders are a customs union and, or possibly combined with, a second
referendum.
The initial indication was that two options might then be
put to parliament later next week: May’s deal and a customs union/second
referendum variant, or whatever emerges from MPs on Monday. It would amount to
a final runoff, a last-ditch attempt to scare or bring rightwing Tory holdouts
onboard.
Could May win a fourth time around?
The Commons arithmetic is still formidable. There are three
groups who remain opposed to her deal, despite Boris Johnson and others backing
it.
There are 28 hard-Brexit MPs – who have dubbed themselves
“the Spartans” and who voted against May on Friday – but there are also 10 DUP
MPs – and a further six Conservative MPs who support a second referendum.
If she somehow got all of them onside May would have 323 MPs
– a bare majority, when 320 are needed to win. But they are groups with
disparate interests and it would take only a handful of holdouts to kill off
May’s chances.
The alternative would be for more opposition MPs to switch
sides, but only five Labour MPs and two former Labour MPs have done so (plus a
former LibDem). But May has failed to offer would-be defectors anything
credible so far.
Are MPs not running out of time?
The rejection of the deal means that as it stands the UK
will crash out of the European Union without a deal on 12 April unless
something emerges.
Downing Street insiders were saying after the vote that
while there had been a lot of talk of crunch weeks before, next week really was
decision time. That suggests that any fourth meaningful vote next week would be
the last.
As May herself admitted: “We are reaching the limits of this
process”.
So will the UK end up leaving without a deal?
Probably not, because if parliament has made one thing
clear, it is that it is not prepared to leave the EU without a deal. And MPs
are prepared to seize control of the Commons agenda to ensure that doesn’t
happen.
So if May can’t get a her deal through next week, the UK
will have to seek a long extension from the European Union, of nine or 12
months, at the emergency Brexit summit on 10 April.
The EU is likely to allow this, and will set conditions.
There are EU elections due in May in which the UK would have to take part.
Also, the UK would have to indicate that something would change significantly
to justify the EU allowing a long extension.
Does that mean there could be a general election? Or a
second referendum?
Very possibly. A lot can happen in British politics in a
year. May might resign if she gets a long extension, allowing for a new prime
minister to emerge who may in turn want to call an election.
But while Jeremy Corbyn, in his remarks immediately after
the vote result, said Labour wanted an election, the opposition might not want
to fight against a new leader. Meanwhile, the Conservatives are very, very
unlikely to allow May to fight an election as their leader.
That could point instead to a second referendum, although
that was voted down last week by 295 to 268 votes. But if it were to pass on
Monday, it could be a viable, last-resort option. If it didn’t, the Brexit
standoff would become more acute.
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