Theresa May survives vote, but Britain remains in Brexit deadlock
Prime minister invites party leaders to discuss alternative
deal but sticks to red lines
Heather Stewart, Jessica Elgot and Peter Walker
Thu 17 Jan 2019 00.50 GMT First published on Wed 16 Jan 2019
19.16 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/…/mays-government-survives-no-c…
Theresa May has survived as prime minister after weathering
a dramatic no-confidence vote in her government, but was left scrambling to
strike a Brexit compromise that could secure the backing of parliament.
In a statement in Downing Street on Wednesday night, the
prime minister exhorted politicians from all parties to “put aside
self-interest”, and promised to consult with MPs with “the widest possible
range of views” in the coming days.
It followed her announcement that she would invite Jeremy
Corbyn and other party leaders for immediate talks on how to secure a Brexit
deal, something she had declined to do earlier in the day, although Labour
later said Corbyn would decline the invitation unless no-deal was taken off the
table.
A day after overwhelmingly rejecting her Brexit deal, rebel
Conservatives and Democratic Unionist party (DUP) MPs swung behind the prime
minister to defeat Labour’s motion of no confidence by 325 votes to 306 – a
majority of 19.
In her late-night statement, the prime minister said: “I am
disappointed that the leader of the Labour party has not so far chosen to take
part – but our door remains open … It will not be an easy task, but MPs know
they have a duty to act in the national interest, reach a consensus and get
this done.”
The Scottish National party’s leader in Westminster, Ian
Blackford, met May on Wednesday night, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Vince
Cable, also accepted her invitation.
Blackford later wrote to May, urging her to make a “gesture
of faith” to show that she was serious. He said the SNP would take part in
cross-party talks if she was able to confirm “that the extension of article 50,
a ruling out of a no-deal Brexit and the option of a second EU referendum would
form the basis of those discussions”.
With just five days to go before May must make a statement
to parliament setting out her Brexit plan B, Downing Street continued to
indicate that she was not ready to budge on her red lines, including membership
of a customs union.
Conservative politicians are deeply divided about how May
should adapt her deal to win over hostile MPs.
The South Cambridgeshire Tory MP, Heidi Allen, said: “I
thought she was incredibly brave [after the Brexit defeat] and it felt like she
got that we need to change. But today it was: ‘I’ll talk to people, but my red
lines are still there.’ And that’s not going to work at all.
“Maybe the prime minister needs a little bit longer but she
has got to reflect: stop pandering to the hard right of my party and start
talking to those of us who have been working across parties for months. We’re a
functioning, collaborative body already. She just needs to tap into us.”
Some cabinet ministers clearly indicated the need for
flexibility. The justice secretary, David Gauke, warned that the government
should not allow itself to be “boxed in”, and Amber Rudd suggested a customs
union could not be ruled out.
Labour has not ruled out tabling further no-confidence votes
in the days ahead, in the hope of peeling off exasperated Tory rebels and
triggering a general election. But on Wednesday night other opposition parties
sent a letter to Corbyn, which said they expected him to honour his promise to
back a public vote if Labour failed to get an election.
A Lib Dem source suggested the party may not back future no
confidence votes if it felt they were a way to evade the issue. “We will
support any real opportunity to take down the Tories with relish. We will not
be party to Corbyn using spurious means to avoid Labour policy, by pursuing
unwinnable no-confidence votes,” the source said.
The DUP was quick to stress that without its 10 MPs, the
government would have lost the confidence vote, and called on May to focus on
tackling their concerns with the Irish backstop.
“Lessons will need to be learned from the vote in
parliament. The issue of the backstop needs to be dealt with and we will
continue to work to that end,” said Nigel Dodds, the DUP leader at Westminster.
May’s spokesman said a no-deal Brexit could not be ruled
out. However, the Daily Telegraph claimed to have got hold of a recording of
Philip Hammond speaking to business leaders on Tuesday night in which the
chancellor said the threat of a no-deal could be taken “off the table” within
days.
May’s spokesman suggested a customs union was not up for
discussion: “We want to be able to do our own trade deals, and that is
incompatible with either the or a customs union.”
After meeting party leaders, May is expected to extend the
invitation to opposition backbenchers over the coming days, as well Tory
Eurosceptics.
What are the alternatives to May's rejected Brexit deal?
Read more
“We want to find a way forward and we are approaching this
in a constructive spirit,” May’s spokesman said. “We’ve set out the principles
but clearly there is an overriding aim – to leave the European Union with a
good deal – and we are open-minded.”
Civil servants and political staff are likely to attend the
meetings, and ministers can direct civil servants to draw up more concrete
plans where necessary, but the talks will not have the same formal status as
coalition negotiations.
Wednesday’s vote followed an ill-tempered debate in which
Corbyn accused May of presiding over a “zombie government”.
“It is clear that this government are not capable of winning
support for their core plan on the most vital issue facing this country. The
prime minister has lost control and the government have lost the ability to
govern.”
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, wound up the debate for
his party by saying May would for ever be known as “the nothing-has-changed
prime minister”.
“No one doubts her determination, which is generally of an
admirable quality, but, misapplied, it can be toxic,” he said. “And the
cruellest truth of all is that she doesn’t possess the necessary political
skills, empathy, ability, and most crucially, the policy, to lead this country
any longer.”
The environment secretary, Michael Gove, responded with a
robust speech widely regarded at Westminster as a leadership pitch, praising
May’s “inspirational leadership” and attacking Corbyn on issues from
antisemitism to foreign policy.
“If he cannot protect the proud traditions of the Labour
party, how can he possibly protect his country?” he asked.
One former Labour MP, John Woodcock, who resigned from the
party after being investigated over sexual harassment claims, abstained from
the vote, saying Corbyn was “unfit to lead the country”.
Had the motion passed, MPs would have had 14 days for an
alternative government to emerge that could command a majority in the Commons,
or a general election would have been triggered.
Corbyn is now likely to come under pressure from party
activists to move towards supporting a second referendum. A group of more than
70 Labour MPs announced on Wednesday morning that they were backing the call
for a “people’s vote”.
Labour’s formal position, adopted at its conference in Liverpool
last year, commits the party to press for a general election. Failing that, all
options are on the table, including that of campaigning for a second
referendum.
First history, then the hangover: MPs traipse back to the
farce
John Crace
It was the day after the night before, and Tories backed
their ringleader for this mess
@JohnJCrace
Wed 16 Jan 2019 20.59 GMT Last modified on Thu 17 Jan 2019
07.23 GMT
The Ship of Fools drifts on, its captain and crew seemingly
indifferent to the rocks ahead. There was a time when Westminster was just your
average shitshow, but that shark has long since been jumped. A shitshow at
least has a certain entertainment value; now there’s more fun to be had from
having a panic attack. Which is what the rest of the country has moved on to.
That and foraging in Jacob Rees-Mogg’s recycling for food to stockpile.
And there is nothing average about this parliament. If only.
That’s a level of elite performance which most MPs can only dream about. It’s
taken years of training for this bunch just to learn how to get dressed in the
morning. Or undressed in Boris Johnson’s case. You’d get more sense out of
someone who’d overdosed on barbiturates.
Alice hasn’t just disappeared through the looking glass.
She’s kicked in the whole mirror. On the morning after the night before, it was
almost as if no one was fully aware of the significance of the government
having suffered the most crushing defeat on record.
Rather than a sense of history in the making, there was more
a vague sense of embarrassment. As if everyone had blacked out after getting
completely trashed and had come round unable to remember precisely what they
had said or done. All they had was a lingering sense of having behaved badly. A
communal dance of shame in which no one quite dared to look anyone else in the
eye.
As ever it was Theresa May who set the tone. At prime
minister’s questions nothing had changed. The reason her deal had been rejected
was because parliament had failed to understand it properly. So as a special
treat, she was prepared to sit down with those MPs who agreed with her and
explain to them why she was right. And when she had done that she would bring
the deal back to the Commons to let them have another go at voting it down.
This wasn’t just delusional. It was disturbingly
pathological. Jeremy Corbyn tried to introduce a note of reality, but May
wasn’t having it. At times of crisis her sense of denial inevitably prevails.
Those who had spent the morning working on decommissioning her memory had done
a decent job. She had already blanked out just how crap she was. She was proud
to be the woman without qualities.
Things didn’t much improve when the Labour leader opened the
no-confidence vote. You’d have imagined that Corbyn would have made a bit of an
effort with this speech. After all, it was notionally the moment he had aspired
to for the past 35 years. He spoke well enough about why May had failed on
Brexit, but then even a Question Time audience can manage that these days. He
was less than convincing on why he should replace her. Maybe he was just
distracted by the knowledge he was certain to lose and would then be nudged
closer to a second referendum he didn’t want. Or perhaps he was more in touch
with the country than he sometimes appears. Most opinion polls have “don’t
know” as the runaway favourite to be next prime minister. After the Four Pot
Plants.
May defended her record, slowly and robotically. She was a
legend: she’d been held in contempt of parliament; she’d lost a budget vote;
and now her Brexit deal had suffered a record parliamentary defeat. That was a
stunning hat-trick of own goals. And she hadn’t even done the decent thing and
resigned! Beat that! She was already a YouTube classic. Give her a few more
weeks and she’d overtake David Cameron as the country’s worst-ever prime
minister.
The next few hours were best forgotten as Tories, many of
whom had gone out of their way to make plain their lack of confidence in May,
went on to say why she had their full confidence and should remain prime
minister. Some even wondered out loud why the public had such a low opinion of
politicians. They should try listening to themselves some time. Rebecca Pow
sobbed that the Commons should have been talking about Conservative
achievements. Not that she could think of many.
'Either he backs Brexit, or the people': the Commons
no-confidence debate in quotes
Read more
Wes Streeting, Stella Creasy and Tom Watson livened things
up a bit, but there was no disguising that history was proving to be an
anti-climax as no one seriously believed the confidence vote had a prayer.
Michael Gove was so sure of victory that, in between rubbishing the idea of
Corbyn as a possible prime minister, he took the piss out of May by describing
her as “inspirational” in his closing speech.
Sure enough, the prime minister crept over the line by 52%
to 48%; history repeating itself first as tragedy, then as farce. Not that she
cared. She had won a vote for the first time in weeks. She was a winner after
all.
May made a brief statement finally inviting other party
leaders to hear why her red lines still stood. Corbyn and the Scottish National
party’s Ian Blackford demanded that a no deal should be taken off the table:
the DUP’s Nigel Dodds reminded her she had only survived because of his party’s
votes and that the price of his continued support was a hard Brexit. And more
cash.
The chancellor immediately got out his credit card but May
remained impassive. Her face frozen. The Brexit circle could still not be
squared and the shutters had gone down again. She wasn’t listening. She was
barely there. Even in victory, she was a darkness visible.
Brexit: What now?
MPs could force a delay to Brexit of 9 months.
By TOM
MCTAGUE 1/16/19, 7:35 PM CET
Updated 1/17/19, 8:53 AM CET
LONDON — Put a faint cross through March 29, 2019. Pencil in
December 31, 2019.
Now that Theresa May has survived the latest attempt to drag
her from office — a no-confidence vote on Wednesday evening — she will face a
parliamentary ambush designed to wrestle away control of the Brexit
negotiations. That could result in Britain’s withdrawal being delayed for nine
months.
A lot needs to happen before then.
Here’s what.
Wednesday, January 16
By defeating Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to force
a general election through a vote of no confidence in the government, the U.K.
prime minister has bought herself time.
May said she would immediately begin negotiations with the
leaders of parliamentary parties to try to find a compromise Brexit that could
be negotiated with the EU.
The talks will include Tory and Democratic Unionist Party
MPs who want to see more safeguards built into the Irish backstop, including a
cutoff date or a unilateral exit mechanism, neither of which Brussels has said
it is willing to accept.
Also up will be MPs from the Labour Party who want Brexit
delivered, but a softer version with closer regulatory alignment with the EU, a
permanent customs union and greater environmental and labor protections.
Justice Secretary David Gauke suggested the government might
be willing to offer a full customs union as the price of a deal. “At this stage
we are engaging with parliamentary opinion,” he said Wednesday. “I don’t think
we can today be boxing ourselves in.”
The big danger for May now is that she loses control before
she can make any progress.
Monday, January 20
Under the terms of a controversial amendment put forward by
Tory backbencher Dominic Grieve and forced on the government by MPs earlier
this month, the prime minister must return to parliament by Monday setting out
how she plans to proceed following MPs’ rejection of her Brexit deal.
This will take the form of a motion in the House of Commons,
which can be amended by MPs before a vote within seven working days. May’s
aides have said they plan to move to a vote “quickly,” suggesting sometime that
week.
EU officials are not expecting May to visit Brussels until
the end of next week at the earliest, giving her a small window of time to find
a new compromise package which most MPs now expect to lean heavily toward a
softer Brexit along the lines sought by Tory rebels and Labour MPs.
The January ambush
The big danger for May now is that she loses control before
she can make any progress.
This starts with an amendment being drawn up by Tory MP Nick
Boles, which seeks to take a no-deal off the table and empower MPs to find a
compromise Brexit acceptable to a majority of the House of Commons.
The idea is to amend the “Plan B” motion May is expected to
lay on January 20, not simply to propose a different type of Brexit but to
change parliamentary rules — so-called Standing Orders — to allow backbench MPs
to rush through new legislation in a single day ruling out no deal.
Anti-Brexit protesters demonstrate outside the Houses of
Parliament on January 15, 2019 in London | Jack Taylor/Getty Images
If the amendment secures a majority, it sets aside
parliamentary time for a new EU Withdrawal Bill, which will take precedence
over all government business.
Boles and his allies believe this bill could become law by
mid-February and he is confident it has majority support.
Three-week window
The Boles law would give the government three further weeks
to secure a new deal with the EU that has majority support in the Commons. This
takes the country to early March, perilously close to Brexit Day on March 29.
At this point, the liaison committee — the most senior
committee of the House — would be handed the power to obtain a majority in
favor of an alternative plan.
The liaison committee — made up of committee chairs and led
by the anti-Brexit Tory MP Sarah Wollaston — would become the de facto
government of the U.K., with the actual government becoming the real opposition
in all but name. The places in the Commons would stay the same, but the power
would have shifted.
EU leaders (who must agree unanimously) have indicated that
they would be open to an extension in pursuit of a defined aim, but not just to
prolong the Brexit uncertainty.
Under the Boles plan, the government would be compelled to
implement whatever is proposed by the liaison committee if it is approved by
the House of Commons and agreed by the EU.
If the liaison committee fails in this task — or refuses —
the Boles law, as currently drafted, would compel the government to seek a
nine-month extension of the Article 50 process.
Brexit get-out
What if the government and the liaison committee fail to
come up with an alternative plan and then the European Union rejects the
application for an extension to Article 50? EU leaders (who must agree
unanimously) have indicated that they would be open to an extension in pursuit
of a defined aim, but not just to prolong the Brexit uncertainty. If there is
no plan they might refuse.
At this point, MPs opposed to Britain’s withdrawal from the
European Union want the government to unilaterally revoke Article 50, stopping
Brexit in its tracks. Under the current Boles plan, the government would not be
compelled to do so, though some MPs may seek to amend the plan to make this
explicit.
This article is from POLITICO Pro: POLITICO’s premium policy
service. To discover why thousands of professionals rely on Pro every day,
email pro@politico.eu for a complimentary trial.
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