After wasting all but 59 days of the two year negotiating period the PM told the House of Commons yesterday afternoon that she plans to go back to Brussels and try to reopen the talks that the EU have repeatedly said are closed (HERE). She is indeed a bloody difficult woman, and not to put too fine a point on it, a bloody stupid one as well.
She is probably regarded by the rest of the EU as the embodiment of the old saying, a friend in need is a pain in the a**e. The relative who is constantly on the cadge and can't be satisfied no matter what you do.
She is probably regarded by the rest of the EU as the embodiment of the old saying, a friend in need is a pain in the a**e. The relative who is constantly on the cadge and can't be satisfied no matter what you do.
She asked parliament to support the Brady amendment - the one that calls for the backstop to be replaced by 'alternative arrangements' - the one that the deputy chief negotiator Sabine Weyand, said yesterday, "failed to offer any clue as to what alternative arrangement parliament could support". They duly did. A lot of the Tories still believe in fairies.
Bizarrely, the PM herself voted to support the amendment which essentially trashed a large section of her own deal - the one she described last week as the best and the only one available. Harold Wilson was right, a week in politics is a long time.
Except, for Ian Blackford's amendment, most votes last night after the debate were strictly along party lines. Blackford, the SNP leader suffered a humiliating defeat which will only feed the SNP's sense of grievance that Scotland is being ignored. It was another tiny crack in the union. The Spelman/Dromey amendment, rejecting a no deal exit, passed by 8 votes and although not binding, it sends a shot across the government's bows and allowed Corbyn to climb down more or less gracefully and agree to talks with Theresa May.
Corbyn's own amendment, which tried to push the government towards a closer relationship with the EU, was defeated.
Sir Graham Brady's amendment, to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement and cut out the backstop, passed, but not by a huge majority 317-301. It showed the Tory party is still not prepared to accept the consequences of Brexit and can only seem to support amendments that are simply a waste of time.
Later in the evening we learned via the BBC that Juncker had actually telephoned Mrs May at noon advising that it would be 'fruitless' to come to Brussels and ask for the WA to be changed. So, even as she was speaking to MPs from the despatch box telling them she would go to Brussels and demand alternative arrangements, she knew it was impossible. As if that wasn't enough, the idea was firmly rejected by the EU within minutes of the vote. Donald Tusk's spokesman confirming that the backstop is part of the WA and it will not be reopened.
'Alternative arrangements' could be a metaphor for Brexit itself. When leavers voted in 2016 they were really voting for an alternative to the existing arrangements. After almost three years we are back to square one. Like the average leave voter, Conservative MPs know what they don't want but not what the alternative is.
It's perfectly clear that most of the ERG and the DUP want to see the backstop removed altogether. This is what they mistakenly think the EU will concede. The plan, I assume is to propose Plan C, the maximum facilitation high technology fantasy that the Brexiteers cling to as the solution to keeping an open border in Ireland. This is known as the Malthouse plan, after the MP Kit Malthouse.
David Henig, director of the UK Trade Policy Project at the European Centre for International Political Economy, writing in The Guardian (HERE) says the whole plan is dead in the water:
It's perfectly clear that most of the ERG and the DUP want to see the backstop removed altogether. This is what they mistakenly think the EU will concede. The plan, I assume is to propose Plan C, the maximum facilitation high technology fantasy that the Brexiteers cling to as the solution to keeping an open border in Ireland. This is known as the Malthouse plan, after the MP Kit Malthouse.
David Henig, director of the UK Trade Policy Project at the European Centre for International Political Economy, writing in The Guardian (HERE) says the whole plan is dead in the water:
"There is a mistaken belief that the prime minister will be strengthened by a unified Conservative party position. However such a position has to be realistic, and one that directly attacks the most fundamental red line of the European commission is not. It is almost as if the commission suggested the UK abandoned its commitment to end freedom of movement. On the contrary, this compromise is likely to infuriate the EU and member states, who will see in it a continued failure of the UK to grapple with the choices brought by Brexit, and a rerun of ideas already rejected".
If the EU did reopen the legal text it would set a dangerous precedent. Any country they agreed any treaty with would come back and ask for changes to any bits they later found uncomfortable. It would never be possible to close any agreement permanently.
One can imagine the EU either standing by the Withdrawal Agreement as it is, or offering to begin totally new talks, almost certainly with a proviso that the UK remains in the customs union and aspects of the single market. This would take time, months certainly and what was agreed would then come back to parliament and be refused by the ERG. We would be be no further forward than we are today.
Eventually it will come down to who needs the deal the most and therefore will have to bend and concede the most. This is certainly the UK. When that fact finally sinks in we will have made some progress towards accepting our diminished place in the world.
Leaving without a deal is unthinkable and doing it on March 29th even less so. If the deal cannot get past parliament, and this is how it seems at the moment, we are either heading for a delay or a revocation of Article 50.
What does all this tell us? Not a lot. The Commons has rejected Mrs May's deal, seems to be against a closer relationship, does not want a hard border in Ireland or a backstop, and won't accept a no deal Brexit. So, that's all clear then. We are still in cake and eat it territory.
What was striking was the number of Tory MPs and ministers who were still talking about the UK leaving on March 29th. Brexiteers asked for assurances we are leaving on the due date and May was happy to give it to them. What disappointment lies ahead.
This morning Phillipe Lamberts was on the Today programme on Radio 4. He is a mere Belgium MEP but spoke more sense than the entire House of Commons. Faced with the argument that Mrs May could go to Brussels and tell Barnier she had a majority of the House behind her plan to junk the backstop, he said the EU Parliament is against it. It's a case of the EU parliament being more powerful than the UK parliament.
He also said the problem in the UK at the moment is both party leaders are putting party unity ahead of the national interests. I think this is a astute observation.
And asked about the EU being concerned about no deal, he said the bigger risk to the EU is allowing the UK to break-up the single market by having divergent regulations and an open border in Ireland. A no deal Brexit is for him, the lesser of two evils. How true.
