May Will Lose the Brexit Vote Tonight; Here's What Happens Next

By dinner time tonight, Theresa May is likely to be somewhere in the middle of suffering one of the biggest Parliamentary defeats for a century.

After a rubbish final attempt to win people round on Monday, the Prime Minister faces The Meaningful Vote on her Brexit deal. With news organisations predicting defeat by over 200 votes – which is absolutely massive – the only question is just how badly she will lose, and what that means for what happens next.

Here's a run down of the possibilities. All of them are accompanied by hostage-to-fortune predictions which people can use to undermine me at a later date, call me an idiot on Twitter and so on.

In short: Labour table a vote of no confidence in the government, forcing a general election. Labour win, at which point big Jez comes in and totally saves the day with his brilliant plan to, um…

Last week, shadow Brexit secretary Barry Gardiner said that Labour would "obviously" table such a motion of no confidence in the government immediately after May's vote fails. Then, at his Brexit set-piece speech the next day, Jeremy Corbyn said that they would launch it "the moment we judge it to have the best chance of success", which might not be immediately. So Labour’s position remains "constructively ambiguous", i.e. tactically astute or shamefully complicit, depending on your perspective.

The problem is, while a historically huge defeat for the Prime Minister would seemingly be the obvious time to launch a motion of no confidence, Labour don't really have the numbers to win one. Corbyn’s strategy so far has been to let the government flail around and avoid doing anything much himself in case it falls flat, making himself the master of slow politics in the process.

Why would he change that now? Because this is a historical moment demanding bold, affirmative leadership? As if.

Prediction: Everyone's saying that this is going to happen, so I'll put my neck out and say: not gonna happen. If I’m wrong, I’ll still be writing about this stuff next week – that’s how political journalism works, baby.

In short: Parliament can’t sort this out, so let’s have another referendum.

Some of the biggest fans of a vote of no confidence right now are Labour people who want a second referendum, precisely because it will fail.

That’s because policy passed at the Labour conference is to push for a general election if that’s possible, and if it’s not, campaigning for a second referendum is on the table. So Remainer MPs see Labour launching and failing a vote of no confidence simply as a box to tick en route to a "people’s vote".

They’re being fairly open about that now, which is good. Because, before, what would happen is that they would feign outrage and say, "Oh, it's a real disgrace that Labour haven’t tabled a motion of no confidence. What an outrage, what a failure of leadership. For shame, sirs." They knew full well that the motion would fail, but they said it anyway just to make Corbyn look like a dick. Which was all a bit tawdry.

Significantly, a lot of the Labour grassroots are now backing a second referendum, and there’s a general vibe on the left that "#FBPE people are the fucking worst" is not a tenable policy position. However, People’s Vote stans don’t have the parliamentary numbers to make this happen, and the Labour leadership isn’t into it.

Prediction: Not gonna happen right now.

In short: The hardest of Brexity-Brexits with extra Brexit.

The impossibility of absolutely every other option and total political dysfunction means we run out of time and just crash out of the EU on WTO terms. Remainer catastrophists' £300 survival kits of freeze-dried food quickly run out, while ERG fantasists insist that everything is fine and what this snowflake country needs is a bloody good civil war anyway.

This is what harcore Brexiteers want to happen – just stop anything else being done until they get their way.

Prediction: I just can’t really see the British state allowing itself to get this completely screwed, but don’t rule it out.

In short: Some confusing constitutional fuckery.

A group of pro-Remain Tory MPs led by Nick Boles who are really worried about a No Deal are planning to get an amendment passed that takes control of the Commons order paper from the government. So instead of the government setting the agenda, MPs would. Hypothetically, they could then suspend Article 50, meaning we don’t leave the EU on the 29th of March. If this happens, expect to see a lot of Leavers wailing about betrayal and constitutional crisis.

Prediction: Doesn’t seem to be a go-er, really, but the government want Brexiteers to believe it could happen so that they vote for the deal rather than give Remainers any momentum.

In short: A deal that MPs can get behind. Why didn’t anyone think of that before?

Theresa May could just haul herself back to Brussels for more talks, promising to improve on a deal that she has hitherto described as the best deal we’re going to get.

German foreign minister Heikko Mass told reporters at the European Parliament today: "The agreement stands, as it is. I doubt very much that the agreement can be fundamentally reopened. If there were a better solution, it would already have been put forward." But he added, "If it goes wrong tonight, there could be further talks." The EU wouldn’t agree to anything significantly different, but could those further talks give enough MPs just enough reassurance over the backstop to allow May to squeak a deal through? I’m guessing not.

Thanks to an amendment that was passed last week, May would have just three business days to present her Plan B (so until Monday). And the MPs would also have the power to add amendments to the Plan B, so Parliament would have more control over the whole thing. May has also refused to rule out extending Article 50, giving Parliament more time to sort itself out. Except that the more time it has had, the less sorted everything has been.

Prediction: Fairly likely that May will try to make this work, but whether it does work is another question.

@SimonChilds13