WITHDRAWAL BILL 2nd READING PASSED

The government got the vote they wanted last night and the EU Withdrawal bill passed it's second reading with a majority of 36 (HERE). There were seven Labour rebels and Ken Clarke abstained. Critics are said to have warned the government that changes will need to be made at the committee stage in order for it to pass into law so we remain to see what those will be.

When we entered the ECC in 1973 both the Conservative government and the Labour opposition were broadly united along with most of the press. However, there was enough opposition to force a referendum two years later which was won by a 2:1 majority.  Today we are in a totally different situation. The government is divided, the House of Commons is divided, the press is divided and so is the nation. How all this is going to pan out over the next five years is anybody's guess. Mine is that it will all end in chaos regardless of whether or not we leave with a deal in place.

What has become clear over the past eighteen months or so is that almost nobody understood what leaving the EU actually means for our future. Even now neither the government or the opposition have a developed position on where we are going to end up. In 1975 we voted for a known destination, now we have voted for something but no one knows what it is.

And today the government is set to publish a new Future Partnership paper on defence matters (HERE) which again apparently will look like an application to join the EU rather than leave. It is said to praise the EU for helping to achieve "crucial foreign policy goals" in recent years and wants it to continue to do so. The paper will say "we also envisage a strong UK-EU partnership on foreign and defence policy following our departure". Another cherry picking exercise?

This has not been greeted well in Europe with various figures believing we are trying to bully the EU or engage in gunboat diplomacy (HERE).