Prime Minister Theresa May has now set March 12 as the latest date the “Meaningful Vote II” can be held on her Brexit deal. In case that gets rejected, she also announced a new vote on whether Britain can leave the European Union without a deal, plus a further vote to delay that exit date by three months.
But for every problem May hoped to solve with this maneuver, she has created others.
She was facing huge criticism for leaving the final vote to the last minute, but there was a strategy behind that decision. In order to turn around the historic 230-vote defeat of her flagship, primary legislation, her approach had been to scare MPs into either voting for it or accepting an imminent no-deal exit.
But through this latest compromise, she has given members more flexibility. They can now vote against the Withdrawal Agreement and vote against Britain leaving without a deal. With the leverage she possessed now gone, her bill is more likely to fail again.
And what happens if the Commons votes against all three ballots? If they reject May’s deal, then the no-deal exit date of March 29, and then also to delay that date? Apparently, in that case the law reverts back to the UK leaving on the existing default date. But this would undermine the previous vote, if they had chosen to reject that option.
Is all that clear?
Conservative MP and influential Brexiteer, Jacob Rees-Mogg, has questioned whether the extension is the first part of a wider Remain strategy to extend Article 50 by two years and ultimately to try to overturn the Brexit referendum. This may be what most MPs want, but one day they will have to face an electorate that chose to leave.
Much is at stake for both Leave and Remain voters who are now close to seeing their dreams or their nightmares fulfilled. The EU has so far kept to its public stance that this is the UK’s problem to sort out, but they know very well that if Britain does leave as planned, it will be an even greater problem for them, politically and economically.
To overcome other pesky national referendums, the EU has developed a tradition of “double-democracy,” whereby it tells member states to vote and vote again until thy produce the result that Brussels wants. This happened to Ireland (twice) and then Denmark. When the French and Dutch voted “no to more EU”{ back in 2005, they were just ignored.
The Brexit Referendum of 2016 brought out the largest voter turnout in British history. For the EU, this took “pesky” to new heights, but its double-democracy solution would have been far too unpopular to contemplate. Even so, calls for a second referendum have been growing ever since, especially in the U.K. Parliament.
May has a reputation for being a stubborn leader. That tenacity has kept her going through one of the most difficult periods in modern, peacetime politics. Just compare her resolve to that of David Cameron, who resigned the day he lost the Brexit referendum. Although many have criticized her precise strategy, she has won respect for her commitment and civility.
It cannot have been easy for her to stand before Parliament and back down so completely on her previous position, knowing that it would probably kill off her current deal and weaken her authority. So, what made her do it?
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had made his own surprise announcement a day earlier. He stated that his party would now look to extend the March 29 leave date and join calls for a second referendum. Although he clearly had one eye on stopping any more Labour defections to the newly formed “Independent Group” of Remain MP’s, he may have also forced the Prime Minister to concede on the no-deal date or else face a rebellion from her own like-minded Remainer MPs.
Just prior to her appearance in Parliament, she held a fractious cabinet meeting where three influential ministers threatened to resign with others if she did not offer the country a way out of the no-deal exit option.
Maybe she realized that in order to keep her government together and in power, she had no choice left other than to offer MPs a vote on the no-deal option and date. To use Lady Thatcher’s phrase, she “went wobbly.”
Andrew Davies is a U.K.-based video producer and script writer.
