Brexit’s crunch point

Unless Theresa May delays the vote, 11 December 2018 might be about to become one of the most important in recent British history; more important even than 23 June 2016. If MPs vote down Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, as nearly all ministers expect them to, they will set Britain on course for either the softest possible Brexit or a second referendum. In the process, they may well split the Tory party.

Theresa May’s strategy has been to play chicken with Parliament. Her team saw virtue in intransigence and calculated that at the last moment MPs would get out of her way. They thought that fear of no deal would bring former Remainers into the fold. Simultaneously, Leavers would reluctantly take this imperfect Brexit over the risk of no Brexit at all.

So far, this plan isn’t working. Both sides think that voting down May’s deal makes it more likely that they’ll get what they want, whether it be no deal or a second referendum. ‘If you want your optimal outcome, the deal is not going to deliver it,’ one minister observes ruefully. Part of the problem, as one Tory MP explains, is that MPs can hear everything May says. So when she tries to warn Remainers of the risk of leaving without a deal, the ears of the Brexit ultras prick up. They then discount her warnings about how rejecting her deal would lead to a second vote — and vice versa.

The other problems are with the deal itself. The backstop is problematic not just in relation to Northern Ireland, but also because there is no simple way for the UK to leave it. This makes it hard for pragmatists to argue that you can accept this Brexit and then fix it later. There are valid arguments about why the EU would not want the backstop to persist — it allows goods to circulate more freely than people — but Emmanuel Macron’s threat to keep the UK in the backstop if it doesn’t give way on fishing has made it nigh-on impossible to make this case.