By the end of the day we could have an inkling of what Brexit might mean. The BBC (HERE) report the plan is for MPs to vote on the indicative options at about 7:00 pm tonight. It is perhaps finally the start of the end of the beginning of Brexit, so to speak. The voting will be preceded by a meeting at 5:00 pm of the Tory 1922 Committee of back benchers where Theresa May will face her MPs with her future at stake. Some people have been suggesting she will commit to a date to step down, provided they support her deal. It is also suggested MV3 could take place on Thursday. This might be a dangerous time for remainers.
The process of indicative voting won't end until Monday apparently when we could have the framework of a compromise solution which the House can support.
Whipping arrangements aren't known yet but Robert Peston (HERE) says he has been told there may but up to 20 ministerial resignations if Mrs May does not allow a free vote. These would all be at junior level and he thinks the real number is closer to 10 but still significant for the government.
By Thursday, if MV3 is actually tabled, the hard line ERG will have had the opportunity to see what the House of Commons is likely to coalesce around, and if anything can unite a majority it will be a soft Brexit. They may then be more tempted to vote for Mrs May's deal as the last, best hope of keeping Brexit albeit just a shadow of what they wanted it to be.
Whipping arrangements aren't known yet but Robert Peston (HERE) says he has been told there may but up to 20 ministerial resignations if Mrs May does not allow a free vote. These would all be at junior level and he thinks the real number is closer to 10 but still significant for the government.
By Thursday, if MV3 is actually tabled, the hard line ERG will have had the opportunity to see what the House of Commons is likely to coalesce around, and if anything can unite a majority it will be a soft Brexit. They may then be more tempted to vote for Mrs May's deal as the last, best hope of keeping Brexit albeit just a shadow of what they wanted it to be.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has conceded that leaving without a deal is off the table and seems to be moving to support the prime minister's deal, following David Davis who also thinks it's a terrible deal but intends to vote for it again if MV3 is put to parliament. Their mantra is now a bad deal is better than no Brexit. This dawning new reality and May's promise to step down after her deal goes through could prove pivotal.
The Mogg says the deal doesn't deliver on 'the promises' made during the referendum campaign. If he's waiting for a deal that does that, he might have a very long wait.
On Conservative Home (HERE), where Mogg announced his likely capitulation, the news was greeted by a tsunami of criticism. At the time of writing, there were 326 comments and as far as I could see, not a single positive. 'Sell out' was one of the milder accusations. Readers were not happy at the man who said he wouldn't support the deal because it would turn us into a 'slave state' (HERE). I do hope Boris Johnson is taking note. John Redwood said last year (HERE) that the deal is worse than staying in the EU, so his voting pattern today will be particularly fascinating.
This is the problem for populists isn't it? All those attacks on May's deal are coming back to haunt them. Playing to the gallery has a heavy price when you finally have to get real.
The men of principle now begin to look like slippery tongued turncoats.
In the Daily Mail (HERE), Rees-Mogg is a bit more circumspect and sticks in a caveat to help repair his now tarnished image as a man of the people. He says he'll support the deal provided the DUP do as well, which at the moment means he won't. According to the Irish Times (HERE) May and Arlene Foster spoke on Monday afternoon and the Unionists are still opposed to the deal. Nobody does stubborn like the DUP, not even Theresa May. Foster herself is like a rusty bolt.
So, at the moment the DUP are standing firm and some Tory remainers will never support the deal so getting it ratified remains a longish shot but not completely out of the realms of possibility.
As for the PM ignoring parliament as she said she might on Monday, assuming they ever reach a consensus that is, Peston (HERE) says the cabinet has been advised, by the Attorney General no less, that to do so would be illegal.
Boris (HERE) has an extra article in The Telegraph today, written apparently in the style of a cannabis smoking Enid Blyton:
"This was meant to have been a week of national jubilation. It was meant to be the week when church bells were rung, coins struck, stamps issued and bonfires lit to send beacons of freedom from hilltop to hilltop. This was the Friday when Charles Moore’s retainers were meant to be weaving through the moonlit lanes of Sussex, half blind with scrumpy, singing Brexit shanties at the tops of their voices and beating the hedgerows with staves. This was meant to be the week of Brexit. And what has happened instead? In one of the most protoplasmic displays of invertebracy since the Precambrian epoch, this Government has decided not to fulfil the mandate of the people".
In fact this week for Brexiteers has turned out more like a preparatory sketch by Hieronymous Bosch.
Finally, if I hear an MP say one more time that, "the people knew what they voted for" in the referendum I'll go mad. I heard it again last night on Newsnight from Shailesh Vara, MP and a member of the ERG who amazingly voted remain in 2016 but then became a hard-as-nails Brexiteer. Nobody preaches quite like the converted, eh? Or perhaps he needs the job more than keeping his principles?
Of course the people knew what they each voted for. The problem is that in many cases it had nothing to do with the EU and isn't remotely deliverable. There wasn't a single common reason among them and much of it was mutually contradictory. This is why MPs are having such a problem finding what a majority of them might be able to accept and compromise on.
