RIGHT now, Theresa May’s Brexit deal isn’t passing the House of Commons.
A sizeable number of her own MPs will vote against it and her Northern Irish allies, the DUP, will reject it too.
Even if Mrs May could persuade 25 Labour MPs to back her, an optimistic assumption, that still would not be enough to get this over the line.
So what can she do to change the dynamic? Well, she needs to try to separate the question of what the country should DO NOW from how she has handled Brexit since entering Downing Street.
Mrs May has made some huge mistakes in her handling of Britain’s departure from the EU. There has been little preparation made for leaving without a deal, weakening the UK’s negotiating hand and sending a message to the EU that we’ll never walk away.
She triggered Article 50 without knowing what she wanted, then wasted months and months of valuable negotiating time in internal discussions. She signed up to a joint report on the Irish border without telling her Cabinet how that would limit the UK’s options and end up shaping the entire negotiations.
Even in recent weeks, she has made mistakes — making it patently obvious to the EU how much of a hurry she was in to get a deal and not letting her own Brexit Secretary see if he could winkle any concessions out of the EU. Given all this, it is not surprising that so many Brexiteers want to vote down her deal.
But the question of how Mrs May has handled Brexit so far is NOT THE SAME as the issue of what Parliament should do given where we are now. There is ONLY ONE WAY for Mrs May to break this link.
She should say that as soon as the withdrawal legislation is through the Commons, she will stand down as Prime Minister. This would enable MPs to vote for the deal without that being an endorsement of her handling of Brexit or an invitation for her to negotiate the next stage of Brexit, the UK/EU trade deal.
One Cabinet minister tells me the PM is now an impediment to this deal passing. Her announcing her departure would make it easier for MPs to vote for the deal.
Mrs May’s allies dismiss this idea out of hand. But she needs to do something if she is not to see her deal voted down, increasing — as she herself says — the chances of either no deal or no Brexit, both of which would be bad for the country.
In Wednesday’s marathon Cabinet meeting, one of Attorney General Geoffrey Cox’s arguments for accepting the deal was that it would be possible for the UK to claw things back in the second half, the actual UK/EU trade negotiations.
But as any football fan will tell you, a team trailing badly at half-time doesn’t change things round by simply sending the same team in the same formation back on to the pitch.
Would Liverpool have come back from 3-0 down to win the Champions League in 2005 if they hadn’t changed anything at the interval? No. If things really are to be different in the second half of these talks, then the UK will need new leadership.
It’s hard to get through customs
THE worst element of Theresa May’s Brexit deal is how difficult it is for the whole of the UK to get out of the temporary customs arrangement with the EU.
What led Dominic Raab to quit was the statement, which he had not approved, in the political declaration that the single customs territory set out in the withdrawal agreement would be one of the building blocks of the future relationship.
Brexit should lead to the UK being able to strike its own comprehensive, free-trade deals. This would, in time, cut prices for consumers, boost exports and better connect Britain with the fastest-growing areas of the world economy. But there is a danger that things could get worse, that this temporary custom arrangement could be replaced by a permanent one.
Those in Whitehall thinking about how this deal could get through the House of Commons point out that if you make the customs union permanent, then it would meet the tests for Labour support that Jeremy Corbyn set out in his conference speech. They argue that in these circumstances, pressure could be put on Labour to support the deal.
No10 are adamant that Mrs May wouldn’t do this, that she would never accept a permanent customs union. I also suspect that this plan for enlisting Labour support is flawed. Corbyn wants a general election as soon as possible and won’t bail out Mrs May, even if that would split the Tories.
Don't get too hung up
AT Cabinet on Wednesday, David Lidington urged colleagues not to get too hung up on how the UK can get out of these new arrangements with the EU.
He argued that before the Lisbon Treaty in 2007, there was technically no way to leave the EU but that, if it had wanted to, parliament could have taken us out.
Now the problem is that some of these arrangements create an ongoing obligation under international law. So, getting out of all of them unilaterally would involve breaking international law. This would, arguably, be in breach of the ministerial code which requires them to “comply with the law”.
But, I understand, it was pointed out at the meeting that the PMhas the power to suspend the ministerial code when necessary.
This means the Government could simply get out of the backstop, then dare the EU to take it to court
New man will take the flak
“LOYALTY is a two-way street,” one Cabinet minister told me after Dominic Raab resigned. This minister pointed out that Raab had been cut out of the negotiations so couldn’t be expected to go along with the result of them.
David Davis resigned as Brexit Secretary because his advice was ignored. Michael Gove wouldn’t take the job because it came with no real power.
Mrs May has appointed a new Brexit Secretary, Steve Barclay. But No10 are saying he will only be responsible for no-deal planning and the Parliamentary side of the job. He won’t be negotiating.
He will also, as a Brexiteer, be sent out to defend this deal. He will be a “flak jacket to go out on TV”, one Leaver tells me.
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Victory now or end up ‘shackled to a corpse’
SPECULATION is swirling in Westminster about whether Mrs May will face a vote of no confidence or not in the next week.
Several Cabinet Ministers are resigned to a vote happening. Others worry that the vote is ill-timed, that in going for her now the plotters won’t win but will instead ensure she stays on as Prime Minister for another 12 months and takes charge of the UK/EU trade negotiations.
A minister complains: “If we strike and miss now, we’ll be shackled to a corpse for a year and Corbyn really will get in.” But if the rebels do get their 48 letters, Mrs May might have a harder time in the confidence vote than expected – though she will still win it.
Several ministers admit that, in the privacy of the ballot box, they will vote against her.
- James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator.