It seems Plan B is dead-on-arrival as they say, with ERG rebels in her party still opposed to anything that looks like reality. The plan is being described as 'in chaos' by The Telegraph (HERE). Robert Peston says the PM faces the ultimate parliamentary humiliation by having control of her flagship (indeed only) policy snatched away from her (HERE). Tory MPs have already 'moved on' before even arriving and are talking this morning about a Plan C!
The Telegraph reports:
"Theresa May’s Brexit plan B was in deep trouble on Monday night as she faced an open revolt from Tory Brexiteers. The Prime Minister made a personal plea to her backbenchers to support a plan to renegotiate the Northern Irish backstop, but Eurosceptics refused on the grounds that it would not be legally binding.
"On Monday night Downing Street frantically tried to claw back support by telling Brexiteers Mrs May will seek to reopen the EU Withdrawal Agreement".
Yesterday, Sabine Weyand, the EU's deputy chief negotiator dismissed the Brady amendment and suggested there was now a 'very high risk' of no deal by accident (HERE). The Guardian reported it:
"But on Monday, EU officials and diplomats said the amendment tabled by the Tory MP Graham Brady, and backed by Downing Street, failed to offer any clue as to what alternative arrangement parliament could support.
"With the votes on Tuesday unlikely to offer any clarity on what MPs can unite behind, the EU’s deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand, offered a sober analysis of the chances of a deal being ratified in Westminster. She said: “We need to have a majority that doesn’t just get agreement over hurdle of a meaningful vote by a narrow majority but we need to have a stable majority to ensure the ratification. That’s quite a big challenge. There’s no negotiation between the UK and EU – that’s finished.
“There’s no point beating about the bush – the agreement was defeated with a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons. That’s a crushing defeat by any standards. It’s quite a challenge to see how you can construct out of the diversity of opposition a positive majority for a deal.”
This morning it has emerged the two factions in the party are trying one last doomed effort to come together with - wait for it - a Plan C! This is apparently using technology for the Irish border to avoid the backstop, in what seems to be a disinterment of the old 'maximum facilitation' idea which the EU rejected months ago. What Barnier and Weyand will make of it isn't hard to guess. Weyand gave a detailed rebuttal of the idea last September when the Brexit Select Committee visited Brussels (HERE).
Brexit will surely be the Tory party's epitaph. What we are witnessing are the words being carved into the headstone. May's plan B and all the chosen amendments are probably going to fail later today and Plan C, if it is ever agreed, will be rejected by the EU very soon. She cannot get anything like a majority in her own party and the various wings are at daggers drawn. She can't get enough Labour rebels to support her position and even if she could it would only hasten the demise of the party anyway.
The mad dance that the pro and anti European wings have been locked in for thirty years is coming to an end.
Every leader since Heath has struggled with the European question and fought constant running battles in the long war to maintain party unity. The war is approaching the end with neither side able to win decisively. It makes sense for both sides to retreat, call a ceasefire and create a clear demarcation line between them to argue their cases separately before the electorate.
The problem for party leaders and managers of course, is that the division on the political right would condemn the Conservatives to opposition for years - as UKIP did previously. But I think it will need to happen sooner or later. The referendum was intended to shut the Eurosceptics up once and for all but it has patently failed.
In the past this need to keep the right more or less together has allowed the factions to keep quiet about the ideological chasm that separates them but it is now out in the open. How is the next party manifesto to be written and who will write it? I cannot see how it can be done.
Update: Just after I posted this, I noticed on the UK in a Changing Europe website (HERE), an article on similar lines with some polling data which you might like to see.
Update: Just after I posted this, I noticed on the UK in a Changing Europe website (HERE), an article on similar lines with some polling data which you might like to see.
