Vernon Bogdanor is Professor of Government at King’s College, London and is usually the guru that government turns to when they reach any sort of constitutional impasse. He has written an article (HERE) for The Telegraph (behind a paywall but you can read it HERE) with the title: Parliament is deadlocked and it is not at all clear how to change that situation.
This was yesterday and followed the resignation of Dominic Raab. He deals with the potential no confidence vote in Mrs May and says if she wins:
".. there can be no further confidence vote for at least a year. However, her problems would by no means be over. She would then have to secure acceptance of the withdrawal agreement in the Commons and enactment of the Withdrawal bill. If she fails, she could hardly continue as Prime Minister since her authority would have been destroyed. It is fatuous to believe that she could then return to Brussels to ask for a better deal. She would have lost her credentials as a negotiator once it was realised that she had lost the support of her MPs".
He points out that only governments can negotiate international treaties, not parliaments so even if parliament tried to amend the deal, "any amendments passed by the Commons to the text of the Withdrawal Agreement or the Future Framework would not, under international law, alter either of these documents, agreed with the EU. Nor would MPs be able to delay or prevent our departure from the EU which, under international law, is dictated by the Article 50 process".
But, and here's the key point:
"... although a meaningful vote requires the ability of MPs to amend the agreement, any substantive amendment would prevent the government from ratifying it. That, of course, might well be the aim of those proposing the amendments. Some seek a "harder" Brexit or wish to leave the EU on World Trade Organisation terms. Others seek to avoid ratification so that there can be a "People’s Vote": a second referendum".
Before we cheer too loudly though, he goes on:
"The fundamental question that the Commons faces, therefore, is whether or not to accept the deal. The alternatives, as Theresa May, has insisted, are no deal or no Brexit. The latter would occur if sufficient MPs support a "People’s Vote" which then reverses the outcome of the 2016 referendum. But it is perhaps unlikely that either of these two alternatives enjoys the support of a majority of MPs. At the same time there may well not be a majority in the Commons for the deal either.
"Parliament, therefore, seems deadlocked, and it is by no means clear how the deadlock is to be broken. "Once you open that Pandora’s box", Labour’s Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, warned in 1950, when Britain was first contemplating a European engagement by joining the Council of Europe, "you never know what Trojan horses will jump out’" Those Trojan horses destroyed David Cameron and Theresa May. They could now destroy not only Theresa May but also the Conservative government".
For remainers in parliament, probably a majority of MPs, this is going to turn on how they can organise themselves into a coherent body of moderates in the centre who can force the government, by whatever procedural means they can, to call for a people's vote. I don't know if it's possible or even if a majority of MPs would want to join such a grouping. It's not impossible that May herself, seeing her own deal can't get through parliament, and as Bogdanor says, unable to go back to Brussels, could decide a people's vote is the least worst option for her and may allow her to cling on a bit longer.
It would have the benefit either of avoiding a catastrophic no-deal exit or explicitly endorsing it through a referendum. Either way she would not go down in history as the person who made the decision to lay waste to the economy and I assume she would be anxious to avoid that.
We shouldn't forget she has already told business leaders that the objective of "frictionless trade" is non-negotiable, in other words it's something that she accepts is absolutely essential. A no deal outcome would deliver the total opposite.
No Brexit may be the only possible escape route from a constitutional quagmire.
