After multiple rejections, Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday outlined her latest plan to get Brexit enacted by Parliament.
This new plan is certain to spark great emotion. For a start, it includes a proposal to allow — assuming they first approve her bill — members of parliament to vote on whether Britain should hold a second Brexit referendum. That will earn some favor on the opposition benches, but it will also lead some to claim that the prime minister has abandoned her previous commitments to the people, namely, her pledge to ensure that the June 2016 Brexit referendum result be honored. May obviously believes that she had to make the second referendum vote offer in order to give her deal any chance of earning enough favor to win passage.
Other details of the new deal include commitments on greater protections for workers’ rights and a closer alignment with the European Customs Union. Again, however, that will infuriate many Conservative members of Parliament who believe Britain’s global trading future requires separation from EU rules.
The issue here is that May needs to attract the votes of at least some Labour members of Parliament if her Brexit deal is to have any chance of passage. And so she is making concessions in hopes of attracting that support. It is not clear what alternative she has.
One thing is for certain: Brexit remains very complicated.
