EU leaders look set to formally approve a move on to the next stage in Brexit talks today in Brussels. Yet back home, this week saw the government suffer its first defeat on Brexit legislation in Parliament. So will the actions of the Tory rebels leave the government hamstrung?
The Tory rebellion may prove to be a ‘momentous vote foreshadowing serious cross-party opposition’ to Britain’s departure from the EU, says the FT. Or it could just be ‘fury and thunder signifying nothing’. What it certainly shows though, according to the FT, is that Parliament is willing to stick up for itself. The ‘Brexit mutineers’ ‘should be congratulated’, says the paper. It is not true that their act of rebellion has ‘undermined’ the government in its dealings with the EU, even if this is ‘unlikely to be Mrs May’s last defeat on Brexit legislation’ in the Commons. This then should teach the PM of the need for flexibility, suggests the FT, arguing that it is vital May realises the need ‘to take the views of MPs into account when contemplating the end state’. After all, the FT points out that there is no Parliamentary majority for a ‘disruptive’ Brexit. At last, Parliament is having ’the debate about the terms of Brexit that it should have had during the referendum’, says the FT. And in doing so, MPs are ‘acting in the national interest’.
But the Sun is not impressed by the actions of the Tory rebels: ‘Who do the smug, self-congratulating Tory rebels who compromised their country, their party and their Prime Minister imagine they were representing?’. They were not sticking up for Britain, according to the paper, which argues in its furious editorial that by voting against the government they are making life trickier for the PM in her Brussels negotiations. It is also not the case, according to the Sun, that they cared about Parliamentary sovereignty. If that was the case, why have they not spoken up before ‘to release it from subservience to Brussels’? They certainly didn’t speak for their constituencies or their party either. ‘So why do it?’. ‘What unites Dominic Grieve, Soubry and Morgan — other than being lawyers — is being sacked from the Tory front bench and holding a grudge ever since,’ suggests the Sun.
Whatever motivated the Tory rebels, the vote on Wednesday night in which the government was defeated was an ‘avoidable tussle’, says the Times. The fact it took place at all shows up the government’s weakness in the Commons. But now it has happened, argues the Times, ‘all parties should be able to agree that it is right for parliament to have this vote. The government had already promised a vote on the withdrawal terms, but without the amendment passed on Wednesday night this would have been reduced to a formality’. Of course, this should not make us ’blind to the true motives of many of the Tory rebels’. It is clear that some of their number are determined to block Brexit, and the government is right to ‘persevere’ against this attitude in seeking to implement the outcome of the referendum. Yet whatever the actions of a small group of MPs, there is no ‘serious danger’ of Brexit ‘being sabotaged’, suggests the Times. ‘A new optimism’ is forming around the Brexit talks that envisages Britain and the EU both getting what they want: ‘a close partnership, tailor-made to reflect their inter-dependence’. Given this positive development, it is wrong for ‘Brexiteers to find themselves arguing against parliamentary sovereignty’. They should realise that for a Brexit deal to hold, it is vital that Parliament debates it properly beforehand, concludes the Times.
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