Theresa May’s voice was hoarse as she stepped up to the dispatch box on Tuesday. “I commend this motion to the House,” she croaked, referring to her amended version of the Withdrawal Agreement with the European Union — a deal parliament already defeated by historic margins in January.
Tuesday’s deal suffered an unsurprisingly bad defeat. Unsurprising because in pushing this deal — which would tie the post-Brexit United Kingdom, and especially Northern Ireland, to the European Union indefinitely — May had effectively abandoned her old negotiating slogan, “no deal is better than a bad deal.”
The deal may have had its silver linings, for a person inclined to search for them, but parliament correctly deemed it unworkable. Perhaps May is hoping for a third “meaningful vote” whereby an increasingly desperate parliament will take whatever they can get their hands on — the same deal tied up with a new ribbon and bow. Indeed, since the EU has been utterly uncompromising thus far, a third vote would be little more than a measure of parliament’s desperation.
One way out of this deadlock, of course, would be to leave without a deal as the UK is scheduled to do on March 29. Today parliament voted to remove no deal Brexit as the legal default by 312 to 308 (admittedly closer than some expected) and will soon vote on whether to delay Brexit presuming the EU grant permission to do so.
However, to be clear, today’s vote is non-binding and parliament will need to act swiftly in order to render it meaningful. Even a delay to Brexit would not fundamentally change the terms of the debate: Britain is scheduled to leave the EU. MPs can fight about when this will happen, but the fundamental problem is how.
For members of parliament, especially those who represent Leave constituencies, to be seen to be actively trying to prevent Brexit would be politically dangerous. Though some MPs seem to be flirting with the notion that no Brexit might be better than a bad deal, it remains to be seen how many will commit to this at the risk of their careers.
No doubt, preventing Brexit has been what many MPs have been hoping for all along. They didn’t want to leave the EU. Now they a free to exploit the chaos, point the finger, and claim it was all just too darn complicated in the first place. The EU, to its delight, is making an example of Britain. If Britain cannot leave the European Union, no one can.
Theresa May’s various deals, which are little more Brexit-in-name-only (aka “soft Brexit”) don’t solve the issues at hand. Which is why the deal lost first time by 230 votes. And the second time around — again, essentially the same deal — by 149. Perhaps if she asked a third time, she’d lose by 81. And then a fourth time by some lesser margin. And so on. Perhaps Brexit will be delayed and parliament will get desperate. Perhaps parliament and the European Union will find a way to stop Brexit altogether.
What happens next is, as always, anyone’s guess.