AFTER the dash to Strasbourg on Monday night, the parliamentary end result never looked in any doubt.
Despite all the colourful and bamboozling legalistic language, the car might have had a new lick of paint and some fancy trims but it housed the same old clapped-out engine that was never going to run.
And when Geoffrey Cox released his legal advice on what Michael Gove had earlier lauded as the “new improved deal,” everyone knew Theresa May was heading for another brick-wall of humiliation as the ebullient Attorney General admitted that, after yet more days of frantic Brexit road-testing, when it came to the backstop, the “legal risk remains unchanged”.
Once the DUP said it was not good enough, the Tory Brexiteers of the ERG fell into line and that was that. A defeat of 149 is better than a defeat of 230 but it is still a humiliation.
When a croaky premier spoke after the vote to announce that she had, reluctantly, conceded to giving her MPs a free vote on today’s vote on whether to accept or reject a no-deal outcome, the Prime Minister’s total loss of control was complete. If she had tried to whip the vote, a tranche of ministers would have left government, causing an even bigger crisis.
MPs are expected to heavily reject the possibility of a no-deal Brexit today and tomorrow to back an extension. But the uncertainty grows.
Mrs May warned MPs that a delayed Brexit meant they would have to confront “an unenviable choice” of whether to back her deal, which remarkably she insisted remained the “best and only” one available, or agree to a different deal.
- IAIN MACWHIRTER: End of the road for May and perhaps the end of Brexit
Intriguingly, No 10 did not rule out giving MPs a future “indicative vote” on what kind of Brexit they might like to see.
This will no doubt raise the hopes of Remainers across Labour, the Tories, the SNP and Liberal Democrats that a Commons majority could form around a soft Brexit or even a People’s Vote.
Brussels, meanwhile, made clear that it would only consider extending Brexit day if there was a credible plan on offer. But there isn’t and there are just two weeks before the UK crashes out of the EU deal-less.
To say, the EU has Britain over a barrel is an understatement. Next week’s European Council is set to be another humiliation for our battered and bruised premier whose power has gone.
Can she last that long? Friday, after all, is the Ides of March.
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