Well, the vote that was not going to be postponed on Sunday was postponed on Monday. The PM chickened out and pulled the vote in a statement to the House yesterday afternoon. No doubt the prospect of losing her main flagship policy by 100 votes or more caused a certain amount of reflection. There was a lot of anger that the announcement was leaked to the press before parliament and that she had waited until 164 members had spoken in the three and a half days of debate that had already taken place. Also, she came under a lot of pressure to tell MPs when the postponed vote would actually occur, but she gave no date and this also added to the House's frustration.
Stephen Barclay, the humiliated Brexit Secretary, who assured the nation on TV only on Sunday that the vote would go ahead, sat expressionless alongside her like a dutiful schoolboy as she made the statement. He was probably musing on what a fool the PM had made of him.
There was not, as far as I could see, one single member of the Commons who supported her proposal to get some additional assurances from the EU that the backstop will not be permanent. And none seemed to believe that the EU will be prepared to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement anyway.
As the PM was on her feet, the pound was
sinking on the foreign exchanges giving a flavour of what is likely to
happen when the deal is eventually voted down at some future date, as seems certain. Donald
Tusk was speaking in Brussels and telling everyone that the Withdrawal
Agreement will not be reopened (HERE) so quite what Mrs May is hoping to
achieve when she meets the EU27 later this week.
Pulling the vote has only delayed matters.
Even if the EU agree some additional form of words, it is quite clear however finely crafted, they will not be able to override the legal obligations in an international treaty and won't be acceptable to most of those MPs who object to the very principle behind the backstop. Certainly not to the DUP, who will only be satisfied by a wholesale rewriting of the agreement.
If that wasn't enough, plenty of members also raised other issues about following rules that we will no longer have any influence over and still having the ECJ have oversight of aspects of the agreement. So, whatever she returns from Brussels with, the deal will not go through.
Time is fast running out. The government is slipping further behind with laying Statutory Instruments. It has fallen behind its target for SIs in every week since June, bar one. The Hansard Society's dashboard this morning (HERE) shows 236 have been laid before parliament so far after 24 weeks. With another 16 weeks to go, about 460 more are needed. The trickle will soon need to be a tsunami.
In the Commons yesterday, there was a sizeable number of gung-ho Brexiteers still amazingly pushing for a no deal Brexit. I truly hope that one day those MPs who have been agitating for Brexit for years and years with no idea what it meant in reality, are one day called to account.
I think what we are seeing is a slow and painful lesson in national humility. We were always going to be the supplicant in the negotiations. A week ago, the old Brexit Secretary said the PM's deal was worse than staying in the EU, to which we might respond, yes, that is precisely what was said consistently by remainers before the referendum and by the EU afterwards.
To leave the EU and get a better deal than all the other 27 members was always a fantasy which we are now watching being dismantled before our eyes. At the end of the process, we may all be wiser, poorer, more chastened and better prepared to be a willing and enthusiastic member of the EU. It might take a few years, yesterday was the first step on a long journey of national self-realisation.
The Withdrawal Agreement represents the first serious, solid recognition of what we are. It is the end of two and a half years of speculation and hypothesis about what Brexit COULD be and the first look at what Brexit WILL be. Cake is off the table.
