By Kirsty Hughes, Director, Scottish Centre on European Relations
THE key upcoming House of Commons vote on Brexit is next week on Valentine’s Day. But it’s hard to find appropriate metaphors. Will the estranged lovers be re-united? Which ones, we may well ask.
The brief unity in the Tory Party over the Brady amendment to dump the backstop and magic up “alternative arrangement” looks fragile. Another row is more likely. Might Labour rebels relight their relationship with their colleagues and support a delay in Article 50, despite having helped to defeat Yvette Cooper’s amendment early last week? Or the biggest Valentine Day coup could be if Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn unite around a customs union.
What certainly won’t happen is Theresa May and the EU’s leaders making up – not yet anyway. Mrs May is off to Brussels today but she will, she knows, get a flea in her ear. She must be seen to go through the motions while running down the clock towards Brexit day.
The interesting one to watch in the Commons’ Valentine’s Day votes is whether MPs decide, after all, to make space for indicative votes on Brexit options or come together to support a delay if there isn’t soon a majority for a deal.
Dominic Grieve’s earlier proposal was to allow six days of priority Commons business on Brexit options. If something similar goes through next week there may now only be two days to consider indicative votes on Norway plus, Turkey plus, a People’s Vote and more.
Success for the delay option would give great encouragement to those arguing for another EU referendum and to the majority against a no deal Brexit. Delay doesn’t stop no deal. But it might allow a bit more time to prepare for a state of national emergency or to step back from the brink.
This assumes the EU would agree – unanimously – to delay. But more preparation time for no deal or another referendum might yet find favour in Brussels. And even if Mrs May’s deal goes through – with whatever unlikely rapprochement amongst political foes – some delay will be needed for the Withdrawal Agreement implementation bill to go through.
A Commons vote for delay next week would put a big spoke in Mrs May’s wheel. She is running down the clock so that her most-unloved deal may be the last option standing, other than a no deal Brexit, at the end of March. This suits the EU too. Any tweaks or legal codicils to her deal will only be offered, if at all, at the last minute – perhaps at the EU’s scheduled summit on March 21-22. A last chance to vote for Mrs May’s damaging deal or the intense chaos of no deal would then come just before the March 29 deadline.
But others have eyed up this end of March window too. A People’s Vote doesn’t currently have a Commons majority but if Mrs May’s deal were rejected it might have a chance against a no deal option. It would then need agreement within days from the EU to extend the deadline to hold another vote – which can’t be guaranteed. Or, if the Commons does a huge somersault, the Government could simply revoke Article 50.
Damaging uncertainty, compounded by Mrs May keeping the destructive option of no deal in play, looks set to continue. The multiple possible pairings of star-crossed lovers in the Commons looks more like a Shakespeare comedy than a great romantic reconciliation.
But the damage and divisions of Brexit are more tragedy than humour. And we can only hope that next week’s Valentine’s Day vote will bring a little much-needed light.
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