A Commons defeat for Theresa May’s proposed EU withdrawal agreement this week is priced in. Westminster has shrugged and accepted another Commons drubbing as a given. MPs’ refusal to back the deal is just another fact of life, something mundane and barely worth commenting on; all the action is in considering reactions and responses to that defeat: will Mrs May cling on? Who might follow her?
But that assumed Commons refusal deserves more attention because it represents failure, failure on a grand scale. Failure of leadership and failure of courage. MPs’ failure to do their jobs.
I think MPs should back the deal. I don’t think it’s a very good deal, because I don’t think any Brexit deal is good. But I do think we have to leave, because we voted to leave. And the deal is the least bad way to achieve that necessary end.
As a couple of friends have recently pointed out to me, in arguing for the deal I am a member of a very small club: very few commentators have made the case for the deal, either on grounds of politics or policy. Even among ministers, efforts to sell the policy of the government have been mixed; for every Rory Stewart, patiently and persistently making the case for common sense, there are half a dozen government members who do the bare minimum to promote the deal.
To its critics, Brexiteers and Remainers alike, this lack of supporters is simple proof that the deal is a bad deal. In fact, things are more complicated, and depressing, than that.
One thing you learn when you join that small club of pro-deal voices is that actually, the deal isn’t really that unpopular. It’s not especially popular, but there are far more people who consider it to be necessary than you’d think. Some of them get in touch to say ‘You’re right about the deal, but I can’t vote for it because…’
Quite a lot of people in parliament privately accept that it’s about as good an outcome as we might have expected under the circumstances.
Some, who have read a bit, even acknowledge details wholly missing from political debate about the deal; the all-UK backstop was a British request; the backstop would be painful for the EU too, and contains an arbitration mechanism; the Political Declaration should be getting much more attention.
Those are details. The simple, central fact here is that there are MPs, both Tory and Labour, who think that the May deal is fine, but will still not vote for it.
They don’t even want the deal to fail. I know MPs who are actively hoping the deal does eventually pass, because they consider at least one of the two realistic alternatives (no deal or no Brexit) to be significantly worse. Yet they will not vote for it, hoping instead that someone else will pass the thing for them.
These MPs can be found in both the big parties and on both extremes of the Brexit debate. I know Tories who will vote No tomorrow who hope the deal will eventually pass, and fear that rejection could lead to Britain staying in. (I also, whisper it, know some ERG types who think leaving with no deal would not be a picnic.) And I know Labour MPs who hope the deal passes, since that would avert the economic harms of no deal and the political rupture of no Brexit.
So if they want the deal to pass, why not vote for it? Everyone has a reason: the local party, the constituency, the political cost of backing an unpopular, misunderstood deal proposed by an unpopular and incomprehensible prime minister. Career advantage. The desire for a quiet life.
A lot of people blame May, and of course she has done a terrible job of explaining and selling her deal. Her political mistakes have been legion, and her decision to vote against her own deal by backing the Brady Amendment was jaw-dropping.
I know all the clever reasons, all the dumb reasons, all the cynical reasons. I know the people who will do it and I know why. But none of this changes the basic facts. This week, quite a lot of MPs will vote against an agreement that they think is perfectly reasonable and which they actually quite hope will pass parliament. That’s appalling, dismal, cowardly.
‘Everyone’ at Westminster knows that the deal will be defeated this week, but ‘everyone’ also knows that passing the deal is the only mature option. The dissonance is jarring, and the dishonesty is worse.
By abdicating their responsibility to use their best judgment and subcontracting their voting choices to their mailbag and social media pressure — or tying their decisions solely to the PM’s political skill and charm — they are simply failing to do their jobs and act on their own judgment.
We have been here before, of course: in February 2017, MPs voted by a majority of 384 to trigger Article 50 and set Britain on a path to automatic exit in 2019. Many of them did so against their better judgement. We all now live in the shadow of their decision.
By setting Britain on the path to that automatic exit, MPs made a deal like May’s withdrawal agreement unavoidable: negotiating against the clock with an interlocutor who can better afford no deal than we can, Britain would always have to blink first. Yet having set the course that led to this point, a considerable number or MPs now refuse to accept the compromises that would inevitably result from their decision.
To borrow Donald Tusk’s terms: there is a special place in hell for MPs who voted for Article 50 yet now refuse to endorse the deal that they know is result of that process. And yes, that is a large number of MPs, and one that includes Brexiteers and Remainers. (And several good friends of mine. Sorry. I promise I’ll join you in the flames in due course.)
On the list you’ll find people like Yvette Cooper, who say the economic harm of leaving without a deal would be too terrible to allow. Sadly for them, by backing Article 50, they already voted to leave the EU this month; all that remains to decide is whether we leave with a deal or without. Passing the deal is the only way to guarantee Britain avoids the dreadful outcome Cooper and and MPs like her say they dread.
Meanwhile there are Brexiteers intent on feeding the betrayal narrative by warning of the dire political consequences of not leaving; think of Dominic Raab on Question Time last week, Or Steve Baker and Nigel Dodds in the Sunday Telegraph. In fact, with the Article 50 process in place, the only thing that could actually stop Brexit is a parliament fearful of leaving without a deal. Passing the deal would guarantee British exit takes place and averts the dreadful outcome Raab and MPs like him say they dread. Yet they say they will vote against a deal.
Somewhere in between those two groups is the Labour leadership, which says it agrees that no deal must be averted, while also appearing to think that no Brexit must also be avoided. The logic of that, of course, is to leave with a deal. Yet they say they will vote against a deal.
The May deal is the only one the table right now and the only one that is ever going to be on the table. As MPs (should) have known since at least November, parliament has only three options: deal, no deal, no Brexit. A decision is long overdue.
Rejecting the deal at this stage in the process isn’t brave or principled and it certainly isn’t leadership. It’s rolling a dice with Britain’s politics and economy because you can’t bring yourself to take responsibility and face up to the complexities and compromises of real life.
That is bad enough but what’s worse is that the people doing it know it and will do it anyway. This is what political failure looks like. This is shameful.
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