How Theresa May's Bottle Job Consigned Us to Brexit Purgatory

This is just a saga now. Monday morning, and Theresa May’s ministers dutifully turned up on the big news shows to back her deal. Would Tuesday’s Meaningful Vote on the Draft Agreement still be going ahead, Michael Gove was asked on Radio 4. Yes, of course it would. On Sunday, shiny new Brexit Minister Steve Barclay was asked the same by Andrew Marr: could the vote continue, even though the numbers didn’t stack up? He seemed to think so.

Still, the rumours continued to waft in. Monday, Cabinet ministers were apparently being told to stand by for a conference call at 10AM. What was that about? By midday, those rumours became unofficially-official with frontline hacks, and not long after the PM's team confirmed that the vote was off. No dice. Faced with certain defeat, May had cancelled her Waterloo. Instead, she would be making a statement to the Commons at half-three.

Reacting in real time, reporters shrugged at each other and made that face you make after you’ve already made all the other faces that involve shock, surprise, alacrity and bemusement, so that the only one left in your arsenal looks like you swallowed a mustard-coated goat dropping you mistook for a Werther’s Original.

Sir Alan Duncan’s face was certainly a picture as he learned the news live on the Beeb. But a picture of what exactly? A piñata filled with bees? The Mona Lisa being surreptitiously fingered?

By convention, Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow, isn’t supposed to stick his oar in. But as he opened the debate, he gave the government the fiercest hiding he could that was constitutionally allowed, highlighting the executive’s cynicism: "Halting the debate after no fewer than 164 colleagues have taken the trouble to contribute will be thought by many members of this House to be deeply discourteous."

All eyes swivelled back to the PM, who stood up and announced that she still believed in the basic shape of her deal, but that the question of the Irish Backstop had become too controversial.

The Backstop is meant to answer the question: “What happens to the Irish Border if we never arrive at a new trade deal after the two-year transition period?”

Leavers think May's version of it in the Draft Agreement means we’ll be stuck in a Customs Union with the EU forever, because the present Backstop means Europe can veto us leaving. Last week, the government’s own legal advice revealed that we can’t leave without EU say-so. That natural suspicion is a key reason for the gridlock, so May told the House she was going back to Brussels this week, to "seek further assurances".

This was reassuring to precisely no one. For a start, Brussels has long maintained that the deal is as good as it gets. Michel Barnier, their chief negotiator, has spent the last two weeks telling anyone who will listen that he won’t change a single full stop. “We will not renegotiate the deal," said EU President Donald Tusk. “But we are ready to facilitate ratification.” “I can’t follow anymore,” sighed Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator.

To translate that: at best, May could get a statement of mutual reassurance – not part of the Draft Agreement, but a memo issued after it, full of fine words, but in the end, non-binding.

Though, this may also be a negotiating position. Historically, the EU has always been utterly inflexible… right up until crunch time. The one occasion that they really refused to bend was when David Cameron asked for limits on Free Movement in early 2016 – a No Deal they lived to deeply regret.

It may well be that May can do a Maggie, thump her fist on the table and win the right for Britain to pull out of the Backstop independently. But that isn’t the only objection Brexiteers have, just the biggest. If it swings 50 votes, that still isn’t enough.

For his part, Jeremy Corbyn had been expected to wait until after the Meaningful Vote to call a No Confidence motion in the government, and thereby attempt to force a General Election. He’s still within his rights to do so, but yesterday he too seemed to have bottled it. A truly blessed era of leadership, it is.

It’s now more likely that the internal decapitation takes May out first. To force a Tory leadership election, 48 Conservative MPs must submit No Confidence letters. On Sunday, they had 25. Now they have at least two more, and as she ducks and dives, increasingly the feeling is that May wishes to save her own skin at the expense of the party’s future.

Whatever becomes of her, the Meaningful Vote is still legally obliged to happen by the 21st of January. The government wouldn’t be drawn on when MPs will return to have their say. But the hints suggest it won’t be until after Christmas. A tight window, setting the stage for a deeper vein of anarchy if she again flunks, and a massive hospital pass for any successor. The likelihood of an extension grows bigger by the day (now at odds of 2-1). At the same time, the EU announced they would be stepping up their No Deal preparations.

The fever dream feel of the day, the sense that Britain has left an important part of its brain somewhere, somewhere in a field in Hampshire, persisted right through into the evening.

By 6PM, still on her feet in the House, answering MPs' questions, Labour’s Rupa Huq accused of her of "a sort of Parliamentary premature ejaculation".

The PM shot back: “If she looks carefully she will see I'm not capable of a Parliamentary ejaculation."

A strange muffled squawk came from the House, like an egret being shown ITVBe for the first time. The Speaker was so stunned he forgot to call the next MP.

Ejaculation or not, it’s a clusterfuck.

@gavhaynes