8 January 2019

Parliament can agree that it doesn’t want a no-deal Brexit, but that’s it

There is a parliamentary majority to reject no deal. But it doesn’t look as if there is one to accept any of the alternatives yet either.

By Stephen Bush

Theresa May has become the first British Prime Minister for 41 years to lose a vote on a finance bill after 20 Conservative MPs rebelled against the party whip and backed Yvette Cooper’s amendment, which sharply limits the government’s tax-raising powers in the event of a no-deal Brexit. What does it mean for the resolution of the Brexit crisis?

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<span style="font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333″>Although Cooper’s amendment was billed as “preventing no deal”, as she herself freely conceded in the House, the amendment itself does no such thing. In fact, by limiting the government’s powers to raise revenue, it sharpens the rocks at the bottom of the ravine rather than pulls the country away from the cliff edge. But the amendment has two important implications. The first is that it gives Parliament an opportunity to avert a no-deal exit at the eleventh hour if the need arises. The second is that, as it was billed and seen by MPs as an opportunity to demonstrate the strength of the parliamentary majority against a no-deal exit it gives us a sense of the size of that majority – and its limitations.

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<span style="font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333″>First, to the size. It’s a small majority: just seven votes, with 303 votes in favour of Cooper’s amendment, and 296 against. But we can fairly say that it would be a little bit bigger in a hypothetical “no deal versus x” vote (x being “whatever the alternative to no deal is”), for several reasons. The first is that ultimately this vote is not going to prevent a no-deal exit, and there is not the immediate risk of one, which means that we should regard 20 as the lower end of the potential Conservative rebellion. We can add at least six votes from MPs currently in ministerial offices, as several MPs would resign from the government rather than allow a no-deal exit to occur. (The total number of possible resignations is bigger than six, but it’s a universal truth that not everyone resigns when pushed.) We can also fairly add a handful of extra votes from the backbenches of MPs in marginal constituencies who do not have religion on the European issue and wouldn’t, when push comes to shove, risk a no-deal exit.

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<span style="font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333″>Why? Because if you take away the votes of supporters of a second referendum who have declared their opposition to an EEA Brexit – Mary Creagh, Chris Bryant, Wes Streeting, Peter Kyle, Mike Gapes from Labour, Sam Gyimah from the Conservative Party – then, once again, the majority for Cooper’s amendment vanishes. And that’s before you take away the 11 Liberal Democrat MPs, who have pledged to seek an “exit from Brexit” via a public vote, too. There are significantly more votes from within the Conservative Party for this flavour of exit than a second referendum but there may not be enough without at least some of the vocal pro-European critics of an EEA Brexit having to eat their words.