Portrait of the week | 4 April 2019

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Brexit exerted ever stranger effects on politics. After an eight-hour cabinet meeting, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said she would ‘sit down’ with Jeremy Corbyn ‘to try to agree a plan’, though it ‘would have to agree the current withdrawal agreement’. The United Kingdom had been required to present a plan to a European Council summit on 10 April in order to be granted a long extension of the Article 50 process, or else leave the European Union on 12 April with no withdrawal agreement. But now Mrs May wanted a short extension, to pass a withdrawal bill before 22 May and avoid EU elections due the next day. MPs had already voted by 344 to 286 to reject the government’s withdrawal agreement for a third time, despite her promise that she would resign if they passed it. Although Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg had changed their tune and voted with the government, the Democratic Unionist party did not; Richard Drax voted with the government and later apologised to the House for having done so. Mrs May said at that point that it was now ‘almost certain’ that Britain would have to take part in the EU elections, and that it might have ‘reached the limits’ of what parliament could achieve. Eurostar travellers were delayed when someone draped in a flag of St George set up camp all night on the roof of St Pancras station.

The House of Commons, embracing an amendment by Sir Oliver Letwin, had in the meantime set itself the task of giving indicative votes on Brexit. Each member, in the Aye lobby or the No lobby, according to whether their name began with A-K or L-Z, was given a ballot with eight propositions. None was passed.