The Biggest Brexit Loser This Time Wasn’t May

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Britain may or may not have taken a small step closer to exiting the European Union on Wednesday night. Who can tell? But it took a giant leap away from the vision that hard-line Brexiters have been advocating.

In fact, March 27 could go down as the day that this group’s spell over the Conservative Party was finally broken. It requires a suspension of reasonable disbelief, however, to suggest Theresa May foresaw or even planned it this way.

Having exhausted the concessions she could get from the EU and seen her deal twice rejected by Parliament, May played one of her last remaining cards (apart, perhaps, from calling a new election). She told Conservative MPs on Wednesday that she would step down in short order if Parliament approved her exit deal.

That offer turned a few recalcitrant heads, including that of Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of a powerful caucus within the Conservative Party, and Boris Johnson, the high-profile politician that many Brexiters would like to see become leader. Both Rees-Mogg and Johnson had described her deal in recent months as not just a compromise, but a complete capitulation, even “vassalage.” To have heard them, a foreigner might wonder if the prime minister would be tried for treason.

By Wednesday, they had changed their tune; it may have come too late. Chances of a soft Brexit — one where the U.K. stays more closely tied to the EU — or no Brexit at all rose on Monday night when Parliament voted to take control of the timetable in order to hold indicative votes on alternative Brexit paths.

Here things get messy, but stick with it. Wednesday night’s first round of indicative voting predictably saw MPs reject all eight options. But two of the options — one for keeping the U.K. in the EU’s customs union and another for a second referendum confirming a Brexit deal — garnered more votes than May’s deal got this month.

That is, Parliament showed itself to be largely centrist. The option of leaving without a deal was once again defeated by a huge margin. But so was a motion that would see Brexit cancelled altogether in order to prevent no deal. Parliament also voted down the unicorns — motions that proposed things the European Union has already ruled out, because, for example, they did not include a solution to the question of how to keep the Irish border open if Britain leaves the EU’s customs union.

Wednesday’s votes are like a qualifying round; they are meant to knock out the weak options. Now comes the difficult part. A new round of voting, presumably one that requires MPs to eliminate options and agree on one, will be held most likely on Monday. But how will the options be whittled down? The choices will be contentious and it will be up to Speaker of the House John Bercow, himself controversial, to make the cut. MPs must also decide how to conduct the new round of voting so that a winner emerges.

None of these votes are binding on the government, but no government can reasonably ignore the result. For the most committed Brexiters, that is where things get perilous. At this stage, their best option for a sure Brexit in which the U.K. would leave both the single market and eventually the customs union is for May’s deal to be adopted. And yet that is a long shot.

It’s not clear that May has found a procedural pathway to getting her vote back to the Commons, after Bercow ruled it would first need to be “substantially” changed. Even if she manages that, the Democratic Unionist Party, the small Northern Irish party that gives May’s government its Parliamentary majority, isn’t budging.

The DUP has one red line — that Northern Ireland must not be treated differently from the rest of the U.K. — and May’s deal crosses it. Conservative Brexiters who thought the DUP would trust them to look after the union as part of the future trade relationship negotiations had forgotten their Northern Irish history. The DUP made clear they would prefer a long extension to the infamous Irish backstop arrangement in May’s deal.

All of this leaves Tory Brexiters awfully exposed. For some time they had been arguing that May’s deal is actually worse than remaining in the EU. Now that the leadership is up for grabs, they’d take a bad Brexit. (Rees-Mogg seemed to reverse his reversal late Wednesday night, indicating that he’d stick with the DUP after all; but by now, who can keep track?)

May would need most of her Conservatives and a large number of Labour MPs to vote for her deal for it to have a chance. But Wednesday night’s votes gave even Brexit-supporting Labour MPs, as well as Remainers hope that there is a path toward a softer Brexit, a second referendum or another alternative.

She’ll try for yet another vote, but why should centrists support her deal now, especially if it may help bring to power a hard-line Brexit leader who would seek to undermine it in the future trade negotiations? They might even prefer a long extension to that.

Brexiters made promises they couldn’t keep and then demands that were non-negotiable. They attacked their leader relentlessly, weakening her negotiating position. They tried and failed to remove her as leader; they tried and failed to change the EU’s position too. In the end they could only support her deal and hope their time will come soon. It’s an abysmal record the rest of the party would do well to remember when it comes time to choose a new leader.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Matthew Brooker at mbrooker1@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Therese Raphael writes editorials on European politics and economics for Bloomberg Opinion. She was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe.

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