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Brexit

How Theresa May Could Become Parliament’s Zombie Slave

After the Prime Minister's historic defeat, can Parliament take back control of Brexit?
Brexit
Scenes from outside Parliament last night by by Jake Lewis

It was a historic defeat. It’s just too bad we’re at the end of history. The last time a government was smashed on this scale? 1924. The question before the House then? An obscure point of principle about whether to set up a commission of inquiry into a Communist newspaper owner.

The next day, Labour's first Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, dissolved Parliament, held an election, lost, and Labour was finished for a generation.

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Today? Shrug and move on.

There was a sense last night that all the pundits had been waiting for the big reveal. Everyone knew she'd lose. But no one had a clue what came after. The question had become too confusing, the future range of multiverses too elaborate, to predict anything.

The paid soothsayers might have sat in the doldrums of temporary unemployment, but the vote would clarify everything, it was said. If we understood the true scale of opposition, perhaps the way ahead would be obvious. May would go? The EU’s knees would buckle? There’d be a huge, visible-from-space U-turn?

Instead, last night was more of a Wizard of Oz moment. Here, at long, long last, was nothing. The PM did not have an ace up her sleeve. She didn’t have a secret cunning tactic to bag votes. If anything, she had less support than anyone had imagined.

Extraordinary, when you consider how much open bribery, phone badgering, threats and occasional charm went into securing her 202 losing votes. Perhaps the Tory whips now consider that paltry sum a kind of Dunkirk victory? Maybe they were staring down the maw of having fewer than a hundred backers, and they’re secretly high-fiving each other and breaking out the bubbly?

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Photo by Jake Lewis

Worse was what came after. More nothing. There was no "Plan B", this magical top secret battlebot the commentators had tried to talk up. Plan B, it turned out, was simply to continue to play for time, to continue to repeat that Plan A is the only thing on the table, and wait for Parliament to blink.

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In her post-match remarks, May pointed out that Parliament has said what it disagrees with, but: "it hasn’t said what it would approve". That’s the basic idea – grind everyone else down, make them face up to the gap between their principles and the actuality, then run down the clock, until there is no other option but May’s.

No one has so much Schrödinger about them in British public life as the PM. This tactic of being an unkillable automaton could still turn out to be brilliant, but it only works if everyone else decides she is as dumb as it seems. In short, she has to be moronic to have a shot at genius. Somewhere in between, though, a small window of opportunity is emerging, as much by virtue of being the last unmarked square on the board. Though it may not be the government that gets to lead it.

In the weeks of build-up, Parliament’s various shades of Remain have been colluding. Yvette Cooper (Labour) and Dominic Grieve (Tory) are now unofficial co-chairs of an unofficial cross-party coalition who want to soften The Deal. Between them, they hold the strings of at least a hundred MPs. If that hundred-or-so were to join forces with the 202 who backed May’s deal, that coalition could win a vote. There is a majority for something out there, if the government can woo the Cooper/Grieve cross-party mob. Or – plot twist – the Cooper/Grieves can woo the government.

It may be that Parliament could decide amongst itself what it wants – then award May a final humiliation before she gets the boot: becoming the zombie slave of the backbenchers.

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If it came from the backbenches, Labour would struggle to oppose it – officially, they claim they want a Customs Union. May has always said no – it’s one of her red lines. But Tory MPs don’t speak as one on that point.

In Brussels, for all their haughty bluster about this being "the only deal on the table", the EU would love to eliminate the prospect of a low-tariff globally-trading UK, sat on their doorstep undercutting them. Plus, a customs union would also eliminate some of the the Irish backstop issue – no longer would there be the chance of different tariffs either side of the Irish border.

The key issue would be betrayal – which is why May can’t abide it. She stood on a manifesto that said No Single Market/No Customs Union in big bold letters. But then, either way, she is still dead within 12 months, and with six weeks to go, the era of preserving ancient fine words is closing out. The Crunch is very good at separating wants from needs. Historians will long argue over betrayals and paths not taken. On civvy street, people adjust quickly to a new reality and forget the decision tree.

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Photo by Jake Lewis

A customs union is a broadly-invisible stealth tax – people don’t notice they’re paying import tariffs because it’s built into the price of the goods they buy. Its continuation merely leaves a big hole of "what might have been". White Van Man might moan about it on LBC, but it’s not actively pinching his pocket. This kind of deal would mean still preserving control over migration policy – and that’s what manifests at the end of your road; harmonised import duties don’t.

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This morning, a few fresh reports emerged that the ground is being softened. Number 10 has said that its resistance to a customs union with the EU after Brexit was a "principle", not a "red line". One Cabinet minister told the Times: "Watch what we say tomorrow." Another minister went further: "This is a starting principle and can evolve."

Parliament has been taking the ball back from government all week: the question is as much whether May leads this process or merely follows. Already, three Utlra-Remain Tories are trying to float a bill that would compel the PM to go to Brussels and request an Article 50 extension until December. In other words, another zombie moment in a career increasingly carved up for her by bits of her party which increasingly feel like separate parties themselves.

But as so often in this unevenly plotted saga, high drama must make regular space for the hyper-banal.

Tonight, at 7PM, Unkillable Theresa will face Jeremy Corbyn’s no confidence vote in the Commons. She will win. But not before Parliament wastes an entire day debating the motion, subjecting us all to tedious speeches in defence/attack of the PM that you could write yourself This, just after Parliament wasted five days in the pre-vote debate, re-hashing mindless speeches reflecting unchanged positions that could have been delivered any time since 2016. Those, in turn, were a re-hash of the speeches from the cancelled vote from December.

At a time of acute national crisis, there’s nothing Brits do better than mindless bloviating.

@gavhaynes