Theresa May is slowly being forced to confront the hard choices that she has steadfastly ducked for months and even years. Her cabinet has already forced a commitment to give MPs a vote to extend Article 50 and last night the House re-affirmed it by a landslide, voting 502 to 20 for the Cooper/Letwin amendment. This will now happen if her deal is rejected for a second time on March 13th and if MPs then vote to prevent the government taking us out of the EU without a deal. Both these are near certainties in my opinion.
This would then lead to the PM having to ask the EU 27 for a delay.
At that point, the government led by Mrs May would be totally out of any other credible options, short of revoking Article 50. But now President Macron (HERE) yesterday told a joint news briefing with Angela Merkel that it may not be straightforward for the EU 27 to grant an extension:
“If the British need more time, we would support an extension request if it was justified by new choices from the British.
“But we would in no way accept an extension without a clear view on the objective pursued. As our negotiator Michel Barnier said, we don’t need more time, we need decisions.”
May will then be faced with having to make the tough decisions Barnier has said are needed. On Tuesday, she told the Commons a short delay to June wouldn't resolve the problem, it would simply push the time frame back and at the end of it we will still be in the same position. Or rather we would be in the same position if she is allowed to extend Article 50 without any pre-conditions. This would play into her hands and present an even steeper cliff edge three months later when another short delay would probably be out of the question.
But Macron has made it clear that he is not about to offer Mrs May any unconditional extension. She will finally be forced to make practical, workable, acceptable proposals that the EU believe will make a delay worthwhile. Without some rubbing out of her red lines it's hard to see a way forward.
The only conceivable route that she might have out of it would be if the House voted to accept the prime minister's deal on March 13th. It's possible the ERG may make a total volte face and the DUP may even do the same - but somehow I think not. Many Brexiteers have objections other than the backstop, and particularly with respect to the political declaration. It is clear the PD seeks to keep us close to the EU, following rules and regulations that we no longer have a say in and for many in the ERG this is anathema.
Yesterday afternoon, Kier Starmer, speaking in the House, picked apart the WA and the PD, and showed the inevitable end point is a relationship so close we will almost certainly use the backstop as foundation for a future customs 'arrangement'.
In any event, Jacob Rees-Mogg told Radio 4 that he might be persuaded to accept the deal if there were some changes to the backstop rather than it being axed altogether (HERE):
"I can live with the de facto removal of the backstop, I mean that if there is a clear date that says the backstop ends, and that that is in the text of the treaty or equivalent of the text of the treaty, if it were to be an appendix to the treaty."
The clear date had also to be, "a short date, not a long date, then that would remove the backstop in the lifetime of Parliament and that would have a reasonable effect from my point of view”.
Judge for yourself how likely that is from comments by Michel Barnier yesterday that the Withdrawal Agreement cannot be renegotiated (HERE). I really can't imagine the EU setting a clear end date and essentially removing the backstop in the legally binding treaty - it is not going to happen.
For JRM and the hard liners to vote for May's deal would take a climb down so utterly humiliating that the ERG is likely to fragment. They would be voting to accept a deal which would make us a permanent vassal state - to use BoJo's words. No, I do not believe her deal will pass on March 13th.
If it doesn't we are certainly looking at something close to a Norway status I think.
This is not going to come without cost to the Tory party however. Andrew Lillico, economist and former BoE monetary committee member, has written a piece for The Telegraph (HERE) in which he says the beginning of the end of the Conservative party started the day before when May first made the concession to give MPs the option to delay Brexit and take no deal off the table. Faced with a choice between 'surrendering' to cabinet ministers or accepting that 70% of the Tory party members want a no deal exit, he says:
"In the end she sided with the Remainer MPs, a group whose obsession with remaining in the EU at all costs is so great that they are content to see the largest democratic vote for anything in UK history overthrown, the British political system smashed, the Conservative Party rent and the country return, humiliated, to the EU begging to be let back in".
Frankly, all this sounds to me like winning first prize in the Brexit raffle - bring it all on!
Lillico thinks the Tory party will split shortly but he says:
"They may be better off waiting until the end of May, when the Prime Minister announces the second 'extension' of Article 50 which would decisively herald Brexit’s cancellation. By then, with the right preparation, Conservative MPs who believe in Brexit would be in a far better position to split off and form a new True Leavers Party. Such a party could win a General Election in due course".
If he really thinks a new UKIP - which is essentially what it will be - could ever win a GE then he is even more deluded than I give him credit for.
