It is likely to be another frenetic week in the Brexit process. Last week MPs rejected prime minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal for a second time, and also voted to delay the UK’s departure from the EU beyond March 29 in order to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
The prime minister is expected to try to win parliamentary support for her Brexit deal at least one more time before going to the EU council on Thursday to ask for an extension to Article 50, the formal exit process. Tuesday is seen as the most likely day for MPs to vote. The question is how Mrs May can turn a 149-vote loss last Tuesday into a victory, and thereby salvage her premiership.
How will May approach the third meaningful vote?
There will be no more concessions from Brussels. However, some of the Eurosceptic Tories who voted against the agreement may accept that it is the hardest form of Brexit they can now expect, after MPs voted last week to reject leaving the bloc without a deal. In addition, Mrs May is hoping to spook some Brexiters with the threat of a Brexit delay to beyond June, and possibly holding European elections in May, if they do not accept her deal. Gavin Robinson, the Democratic Unionist party MP, described holding European elections as “disastrous”.
But the DUP’s main sticking point is the backstop, the controversial insurance mechanism to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, which the attorney-general Geoffrey Cox has advised could endure “indefinitely”. Mr Cox will not issue new legal advice, but he is expected to flesh out on some of the more reassuring parts of last week’s opinion.
On Monday, Lord Trimble and Lord Bew, who played a role in securing the Good Friday Agreement that ended the conflict in Northern Ireland, said in a research paper for the Policy Exchange think-tank that they believed the government could use an article in the Vienna Convention on international treaties to exit the backstop, if it had a “socially destabilising effect” on the 1998 peace deal.
Can May still find a majority for her deal?
To overturn her 149-vote deficit, she would have to win over at least 75 MPs. The most plausible route starts with the DUP’s 10 MPs. If they backed her deal, then some 50 of the nearly 70 Tory Eurosceptics who voted against it last week may change sides. Then Mrs May would need a further 15 Labour MPs, in addition to the five Labour and former Labour MPs who backed her last week.
Even if she fails in the third meaningful vote, Mrs May could still try to bring back her deal a fourth time — perhaps even on Wednesday — ahead of the EU summit. That would be a desperate last effort to avoid MPs seizing control of the process the following week through indicative votes on options such as a soft Brexit.
However, any plan to bring the deal back to parliament would have to reckon with the House of Commons speaker John Bercow, who has a record of defying the government. Under a parliamentary convention, MPs cannot normally be asked to vote on the substantially same matter twice in the same parliamentary session. Unless Mrs May can point to substantive changes, Mr Bercow could block a third or fourth meaningful vote.
Will the EU agree to an extension to Article 50?
Yes, but for how long and with what conditions is unclear. Any extension has to be agreed unanimously with all 27 member states. If Mrs May’s deal passes the Commons by Wednesday, she will ask to delay Brexit from March 29 to June 30 to pass the necessary legislation. That would be relatively straightforward for the EU to agree to.
But if her deal hasn’t passed, EU countries will want more clarity about her plans to build a consensus — and may propose a longer extension than Mrs May wants. The Netherlands is minded to support only a shorter extension, while Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron see advantages in a longer delay. Any extension would have to be approved by both the Commons and the House of Lords.
Will May offer to resign to win over MPs?
Mrs May’s political demise has been much predicted, including after the June 2017 election, in the wake of her disastrous October 2017 party conference speech and at numerous moments since. She has survived because Tory MPs cannot agree an alternative leader. After surviving a confidence vote three months ago, Mrs May cannot formally be challenged as Conservative leader until December.
Some Tory MPs say that her deal would stand more of a chance if she promised to resign immediately after Brexit and leave the next phase of negotiations to someone else. It would be a high-risk gambit for the prime minister, whose authority would seep away further once she set her departure date. But if the parliamentary maths is nearly on her side, a promise to quit could win her the final few MPs she needs.
