Nigel Hastilow: PM dancing with death over hokey cokey Brexit
As her ministers fall by the wayside, Theresa May’s hopes of securing her Brexit deal seem to be disappearing as well.
The Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab himself has jumped ship rather than pretend to support her half in, half out compromise deal with the EU.
The one thing we can say for Mrs May is that she has united the country against her Brexit deal.
The Remainers don’t like it because we are leaving; the Brexiteers hate it because we are not.
Our ‘dancing queen’ Prime Minister wants a ‘hokey cokey’ Brexit: ‘In, out, in, out, shake it all about’.
The marathon cabinet meeting, where resigning minister Esther McVey was apparently shouted down by a civil servant, shows just how acrimonious the whole thing has become.
The cabinet, the Conservative Party and the country are divided into three camps.
On the one hand there are those who never wanted Brexit in the first place and are determined to push us into a second referendum when we may change our minds.
Opposite them are the Brexiteers who are adamant Mrs May’s compromise is a betrayal of everything she promised, all they have been fighting for and what the voters who want to leave the EU were led to expect.
Stuck in the middle are those who think this is the best deal we could have hoped for and it’s better to secure some form of departure rather than either of the two extremes.
It would seem – though wait for more resignations – that most of the cabinet is willing to go along with Mrs May.
Probably, a majority of Tory MPs will do so as well.
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But a sizeable minority on the two extremes, as well as the Democratic Unionist MPs she needs to stay in power, are determined to vote it down.
That leaves Mrs May depending on the support of the Labour Party if she has any hope of getting the deal through Parliament.
Labour’s stance is ambivalent.
Jeremy Corbyn’s hope is that this crisis will bring down the Government and put him into Number 10.
But he is a Brexiteer so he is conflicted.
At the same time, most of his MPs want to stay in the EU even though their election manifesto promised to respect the referendum and most of their voters chose to leave.
Labour faces a dilemma. Oppose the agreement and they are in danger of forcing a cliff-edge no-deal Brexit which most MPs don’t want.
They may hope defeat in Parliament will force a change of Government instead, and some constitutional experts think if Mrs May goes the Queen would have to invite Jezza to form a Government.
Boundary
But it is a dangerous game of brinkmanship and nobody can be certain of the outcome.
Alas, Mrs May is paying the price of two years of failure. Her deal is full of contradictions. In particular, we won’t have an Irish border nor will we have a separate boundary down the Irish Sea.
Instead, we will have a ‘deep end’, where Northern Ireland is more or less inside an EU trading arrangement and the rest of the country is in the ‘shallow end’ where we have the same deal, only less so.
This is only to be expected from a Government consistently decisive in its indecision, unwavering in its flexibility, adamant for drift.
For someone who never wanted to leave the EU in the first place, Mrs May is no doubt hoping her many critics recognise this deal is the best of a bad job.
Mrs May once said no deal was better than a bad deal, but clearly she didn’t mean it at the time.
She has secured a bad deal which ought to persuade anyone with the country’s interests at heart that we must leave without one and put the £39 billion EU ransom payment to good use at home instead.
Never mind making us a ‘vassal state’, Mrs May is like the hapless victim of an Al Capone protection racket handing over money in the face of bare-faced political thuggery.
Brexit doesn’t have to be like this. We can just leave, bid farewell and go: Au revoir, adios, ciao und auf Wiedersehen pet.
But that’s not how most MPs see it and, as Brexit is supposed to reassert the sovereignty of our own Parliament, I suppose we can’t complain.
Mrs May’s own position is now in serious jeopardy but that’s less important than the fact that it looks increasingly as if there will be no majority in Parliament for anything.
It will be the ultimate betrayal, the overturn of democracy and a punch in the stomach for all 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit.
But as this terrible chaos plays out, it looks more and more likely we will be told to go back to the polling booths and vote again in a second Brexit referendum.
Don’t call it a ‘people’s vote’, call it ‘Brussels’ revenge’.
