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Parliament Took Control. Now It Needs a Plan

Parliament Took Control. Now It Needs a Plan

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- For months now, Britain's parliament has been telling Prime Minister Theresa May “no, no, try again” each time she presented her reheated Brexit deal. On Monday night, it took the controls from her.

In an extraordinary late-night vote, MPs passed an amendment that gives parliament the power to hold votes on various Brexit options. Three ministers resigned to support the plan; they were among the 30 Conservative MPs who voted against the government. Its defeat turns British parliamentary democracy upside down; in a system where the government has near total control over the timetable, parliament has seized it.

Whether this altered balance of power breaks the gridlock over Brexit, however, depends on Britain's fractious lawmakers reaching a consensus Wednesday, and on an equally divided and weak government agreeing to abide by it. It may also depend on agreement from the European Union should more time, or further negotiation, be desired. None of that can be taken for granted.

May hasn't given up on her Plan A: She continues to insist that the twice-rejected deal is the only sure way to deliver Brexit, which both major parties committed to doing in their 2017 manifestos. The alternatives, she argues, are a chaotic no-deal departure or the risk of a long extension that would see Britain participating in the May 23 European Parliamentary elections and possibly softening or abandoning Brexit over time.

She'd like to bring her deal back for a third try but admits that she doesn’t yet have the support for it. To get a break, she would need the backing of the Democratic Unionist Party, the small Northern Irish party that props up her government; so far, it isn’t budging.

Monday’s decision was worse than a vote of no-confidence. It was a vote of “no trust.” May had promised to give MPs indicative votes on other options, but refused to say when or how. Lawmakers didn't believe she would carry through on her pledge and have decided to find Plan B on their own.

That is no easy task. Monday's rebel amendment sets the date of the votes, but crucially, not the process. One way of holding indicative votes would be to have them in succession. This can lead to tactical voting and no clear outcome. In 2003 an attempt to reform the unwieldy House of Lords was aborted after the House of Commons was given indicative votes and rejected all seven options.

Conservative MP Kenneth Clarke, has suggested a system of preferential voting, whereby MPs rank the options in order. That’s the system used to select committee heads and would at least mean that all the voting happens at once. The results might remain too close for a clear conclusion, but it would be a better way of discovering if there was an option on which most MPs could agree.

It's also possible a majority want something that May cannot deliver. Remember, Parliament also passed an amendment that ordered May to go back to Brussels and negotiate “alternative arrangements” to the Irish backstop, the controversial provision of the divorce deal that could keep Britain tied to the EU's customs union in order to keep the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic open. The EU had always made clear it wouldn't reopen the backstop; the government-supported amendment wasn't negotiable and succeeded only in running down the clock further to exit day. 

However Wednesday's votes unfold, there is no escaping that if Britain is to resolve its Brexit crisis it needs leadership and consensus. Normally, one would be enough to pass legislation. But at a time when party loyalties have broken down and the country is hugely divided over Brexit, having one without the other is no good.

Neither will be easy to find right now. May repeatedly tried to force through her deal but failed to build any consensus, even in her own party. The only thing keeping her in power is fear among many centrist Conservatives that her replacement will drive Britain out without a deal.

Getting parliament to agree a way forward is difficult enough. But while it’s possible that Wednesday will deliver some kind of a consensus – for example, in favor of a permanent customs union – the votes would also be non-binding. It would still require leadership from the government to convert into legislative action.

That doesn't mean there’s nothing MPs can do. “Parliament is not able to execute government business, but it is significant that we are in a position that parliament is taking control of time in the house against the government's will,” said Maddy Thimont Jack, a researcher at the Institute for Government, after Monday's vote. Its success might even embolden MPs to try to use further amendments to set aside more time for legislation, she noted. Still, it's hard to imagine that state of affairs getting very far; British democracy is set up so that the executive leads.

Wednesday should at least see parliament debate and vote on a fuller range of Brexit options at a time when decisions cannot be postponed much longer. It's a shame that didn't happen more than two years ago. A government that had led a consensus-driven approach to Brexit and negotiated on that basis would be in a very different place today.

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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