The UK faces an exit from the European Union without a deal as Prime Minister Theresa May’s EU withdrawal agreement, required to put Brexit into law, suffered a third House of Commons defeat on Friday.
The EU has decided that if the Brexit deal is backed by the Commons, the UK will have until May 22 to complete its exit from the bloc. If not, the UK will be due to leave on April 12.
MPs voted by a margin of 344 votes to 286 to reject Mrs May’s withdrawal treaty on the day Britain was originally scheduled to leave the EU. The margin of defeat fell from 230 on the first Commons vote in January, to 149 in a second “meaningful vote” on March 12 and then to 58 as some Eurosceptic Tory MPs reluctantly backed Mrs May after she promised on Wednesday that she would resign as Prime Minister later this year if her deal was approved.
On Friday, MPs were asked to approve the 585-page draft EU divorce treaty, covering citizen’s rights, the £39bn divorce bill and the Irish border, but not the 26-page non-binding political declaration on future relations between the UK and the bloc. Mrs May had to split her EU withdrawal agreement to bypass the ruling by the House of Commons Speaker John Bercow that MPs cannot be asked to vote on a Commons motion, which is substantially the same, twice in one parliamentary session.
Some 28 Eurosceptic Conservatives voted with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour and other opposition parties to reject Mrs May’s withdrawal treaty. Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, whose 10 MPs give Mrs May her parliamentary majority, also opposed the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal, saying it cannot accept the so-called backstop in the withdrawal treaty to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland. This provision could keep the UK in a customs union with Brussels, and Northern Ireland – but not the rest of the UK – within the EU’s single market for goods.
The DUP wants to avoid regulatory differences between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland after Brexit, while Eurosceptic Conservatives worry over the risk of the UK being locked in the bloc’s customs union indefinitely.
Mrs May told the Commons after her defeat that she would continue to press the case for an orderly Brexit. Donald Tusk, European Council president, announced he would convene an emergency meeting of EU leaders on April 10.
The so-called indicative votes on Wednesday on alternative forms of Brexit – instigated by backbench MPs who took control of the Commons agenda – failed to produce a Commons majority for a different way forward on Brexit. The option that did best was a proposal that Mrs May’s deal should be accompanied by permanent membership of a customs union with the EU. This option is supported by Labour (the custom union would make it impossible for the UK to sign independent trade deals). The second most popular option was a second Brexit referendum.
MPs must forge a consensus. On Monday, they will hold the second round of indicative votes on alternatives to Mrs May’s deal. The indicative votes are not legally binding.
A general election might be the only way to resolve the impasse at Westminster and it is an increasingly likely outcome, even though the threat of an early poll might put pressure on Eurosceptic Tories and the DUP to drop their opposition to Mrs May’s EU withdrawal agreement. Under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, Mrs May would need two-thirds of MPs to vote for a House of Commons motion to dissolve parliament. An early poll, however, would mean that London would have to ask for a long extension to the Article 50 exit process, taking part in European Parliament elections, scheduled on May 23. There is also no guarantee the election result would end in anything other than a hung parliament.
The impasse could be ended with the so-called nuclear option, or with Article 50 being revoked. The European Court of Justice ruled last year that the UK could revoke Article 50 by itself, without having to ask the other 27 EU countries for permission.
Photo: Number 10
