Theresa May has reached a deal in principle with the EU27 (pending the approval of member states at a special summit, pencilled in for 25 November). What’s in it? The full document is not yet available but we know that there are at least two provisions that make the chances of it passing the Houses of Parliament look very, very thin. The first relates to the Irish border, which contains a measure of regulatory and customs alignment for the whole of the United Kingdom to maintain the status quo at the border, but crucially contains a deeper level of alignment for Northern Ireland than the rest of the United Kingdom. That is unacceptable to the DUP so you can strike ten votes off the government’s majority right off the bat, three more than the seven needed to eliminate the Conservative-DUP majority.
The deal also contains a number of shared provisions on state aid, taxation, labour market and environmental regulation that make it unacceptable to hardline Brexiteers in the Conservative Party and the committed Leavers in the parliamentary Labour party. (The key problem for that latter group are the restrictions on state aid.) So you can scratch off the names of a few more Conservative Brexiteers. By my count, at least seven Conservative Brexiteers are already on the record objecting to the deal in language that makes it near-impossible to see how they will vote for the deal.
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