No one has a clue what happens now.
After the second crushing defeat of the government’s proposed Withdrawal Agreement in two months, the British political system — and its prime minister — stands on a precipice.
With just over two weeks until Brexit Day, no one has a plan.
A vote on whether to leave the EU without a deal will take place in parliament at around 7 p.m., local time, Wednesday, but the Conservative Party is so riven over Brexit there will be no official government position.
The prime minister herself will only make her decision known during the day before the vote. On the biggest question of her premiership, she will not even be first among equals, just another MP bound by what everyone else decides.
Theresa May, almost physically reduced as she croaked and coughed through the day Tuesday, having lost her voice following negotiations in Strasbourg Monday night that ran late into the evening, has to all intents and purposes lost control.
Should parliament vote to leave the EU without a deal, it will become government policy, even though the prime minister has warned it jeopardizes national security, threatens to unravel the union and will make its citizens poorer. MPs will attempt to amend the motion with their own plans for a limited deal with a transition but no backstop, but No. 10 Downing Street believes it has all but reached the end of the road on what it can wring out of Brussels.
As Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker put it: “There will be no new negotiations. It is this.”
Should MPs reject no deal on Wednesday, parliament will vote on Thursday over whether the government should ask the EU for an extension.
This, though, is the extent of the government’s plan.
What would happen if MPs said no to no deal and no to an extension? What if the European Union rejects the extension request? What if the EU only offers a lengthy — or very short — extension? “To be honest, I don’t know,” said one senior government official.
On the biggest strategic question Britain has faced since the end of World War II, the government has its head down hoping not to trip up, one step at a time, hands out feeling into the fog.
Wednesday will start with the publication of the U.K. government’s emergency plans for tariffs and the Irish border in the event of no deal. The market-sensitive papers will be published at 7 a.m. Shortly afterward, the Cabinet will convene to discuss the route ahead. But in truth, for 48 hours at least, the House of Commons is in total control.
But parliament, like the government — and the country at large — is split. There is no majority for a deal; no majority for no deal; no majority for withdrawing Article 50; and no majority for a second referendum.
If the EU says no to kicking the can down the road, all bets are off.
In the vote Tuesday, the prime minister could only muster 235 Conservative MPs to back her deal along with three Labour MPs and four independents. Massed against them stood 238 Labour MPs and 75 Conservatives — plus all the Democratic Unionist Party MPs who give the Tories their majority in parliament, as well as all the other smaller parties.
While May has no idea what comes next, most of the 75 Tory rebels do not have a plan either.
In the debate before the vote, Boris Johnson had stood up to rally the rebel forces, declaring for no deal.
The prime minister’s decision, hours later, to offer MPs a free vote on the matter all but kills the chances of no deal. Yet, Johnson, aware that the overwhelming majority of the Commons opposes no deal, insisted it is now the best option.
The prime minister’s Brexit deal, he warned, would set the U.K. on “a path to a subordinate relationship.”
“I accept that in the short term [no deal] is the more difficult road,” he told MPs. “But in the end it’s the only safe route out of the abyss and the only safe path to self-respect.”
The alternative is “humiliation and the subordination of our democracy.”
When the prime minister stood up to address MPs on the way forward following the defeat, she said she has “personally struggled” with whether to push on for no deal or request an extension from the EU.
The government motion on no deal Wednesday will, however, state that the house “declines to approve leaving the European Union without a Withdrawal Agreement.” The framing of the motion suggests she will vote for it — or, in other words, against leaving without a deal.
But she warned MPs that voting against no deal and for an extension would not solve the problem they all face and indicated that she has not yet given her deal its last rites. “I still believe there is a majority in the house,” she said.
Yet, May did lay out the options now before MPs if her deal is unacceptable.
“The EU will want to know what use we mean to make of such an extension,” she warned. “This house will have to answer that question. Does it wish to revoke Article 50? Does it want to hold a second referendum? Or does it want to leave with a deal but not this deal?”
The prime minister did not mention a snap general election, but that is a fourth choice some of her most senior advisers believe is all but inevitable.
The EU has ruled out any further negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement, though the Labour Party believes substantial changes to the future declaration may be possible.
By opening up the prospect of revocation of Article 50 or a second referendum, May is hoping to pile pressure on her Conservative backbenchers. Her closest aides pointedly refused to rule out bringing the deal back to MPs for a third time.
Brexit hard-liner Steve Baker on Tuesday indicated that there is no way he could ever back May’s deal as it stands — even in the face of a potential softer Brexit or no Brexit at all.
He told POLITICO: “I am certainly not going to allow my conduct to be determined by fear of the bad conduct of others,” he said.
“If others wish to do the wrong thing and frustrate Brexit that will be a matter for them but they are not going to bully me into doing the wrong thing by threatening it.”