The EU did grant a three month "flextension" and Johnson has officially accepted it so we are definitely not leaving the EU on Thursday. However, he failed in his fourth attempt to get an election before Christmas via the FTPA, falling short by 135 votes last night in the Commons. He is to have another attempt today via a different, short Bill which only requires a simple majority. This is the idea stolen from the LibDems and the SNP with the only difference being the date. He wants December 12th while they want the 9th.
Leader of the House, Rees-Mogg indicated last night that the government will NOT be bringing the Withdrawal Agreement Bill back to the House this week so there is no chance of it being passed before November 6th.
All parties seem split on the issue of an election with some SNP members openly speaking against it and some Tory MPs and even cabinet ministers opposed. There will no doubt be some amendments to the Bill and the result is really impossible to forecast.
I wonder if the whole cat and mouse game isn't an attempt to close off every other avenue except the one which many in the opposition parties want, and that is a People's Vote? If Johnson loses today a PV maybe the only way to test public opinion on his deal. Naomi Smith, CEO of Best For Britain was on Radio 4 this morning and she doubted there was a majority in the House at the moment for a second referendum.
If we do get an election in December, and assuming the House afterwards represents the people accurately, it will be just as divided as it is now. Parliament is split because the people are split. If there is a bias either way, then the Commons will not be a reasonable reflection of the will of the people. This is just a fact.
If MPs do vote for a December election as Johnson wants, I wonder if he is not being overconfident as I wrote yesterday? To add to the many reasons to think he may not have an easy glide path back to No 10, I note a couple of other things which appeared in the news yesterday.
Firstly, Nigel Farage launched a typically slick website attacking Johnson's deal in some detail (actually there are plenty of points we remainers could use). After every point it poses the same question: Does that sound like the Brexit you voted for? It is hard to see any electoral pact with the Tory party now, which will certainly dilute Johnson's vote to some extent. We can also drive home the point that nobody in 2016 knew what they were voting for because the DUP and The Brexit Party obviously don't agree with Johnson about what Brexit actually means.
Next, it is being reported that government figures are showing two million people have registered to vote in the last eight weeks. More than half (58%) were from people aged 34 and under, while just 7% came from those aged 65 and over. It is well documented that younger people are far more pro-EU than older ones and this is another reason for Johnson to be a little nervous about the outcome.
Labour have some attractive (if expensive) policies and since the Tories are preparing to open the spending taps wide they can hardly accuse Labour of profligacy when they are doing the same thing themselves.
Finally, I want to return to the question of Northern Ireland, which I think will play an even bigger role in Brexit than hitherto. This report from The UK in a changing Europe at Kings College picks up on something that appeared in the FT the other day. This is that traders who sell into NI will face Rules of Origin declarations which will have to show the percentage of UK content in order to benefit from any tariff rebates. The report says:
"First, it means that even under a UK-EU free trade agreement, there will be a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. This is a crucial difference between the new deal and Theresa May’s plan for the UK and EU to remain in a single customs territory.
"Not only does the new deal create a border within the UK, but the division will be permanent.
"Second, companies in the rest of the UK that do business with Northern Ireland will be subject to the burden of complying with rules of origin even if they do not trade internationally.
"The problem is that for a company to determine whether it meets this threshold, it not only needs to know where its inputs come from, but also where its suppliers source their inputs and where its suppliers’ suppliers get their inputs from, and so on."
What does it mean for NI? Two things. First, the border will become permanent, not temporary as Johnson claimed. Second, for many suppliers the costs of getting all the required data will be costly and perhaps even more that the rebate is worth. In which case, they won't bother and will simply pay the EU tariff and the importer (even that word is going to cause friction - where are they importing from?) in NI will be unable to claim the rebate back. They will end up for all economic purposes still in the EU.
This sort of thing will be aired a lot in an election campaign and the practical effect of dividing the UK with a border down the Irish sea, palatable to most rabid Brexiteers, may not be as attractive to the hard men of Ulster or indeed the ordinary voter in Great Britain either. We shall see.
Another fascinating day in the Commons is coming up.
