Diary Day 811: Parliament didn’t get its Meaningful Vote yesterday on Theresa May’s Bad Brexit Deal. It didn’t get any vote at all. TM the PM cancelled the debate.
Instead she flew off to Berlin and probably other capitals too, seeking help, where the prime ministers patiently told her what she had been told before. No renegotiation. The BBD is it, or no deal.
Or, we now know, revoking the Article 50 notice.
Her Brexit head man, Olly Robbins, was spotted heading for talks in the European Commission building. Their spokeswoman gave a press conference. No renegotiation.
The so-called ERG MPs have got 48 letters in to the Conservative Party 1922 Committee to trigger a vote of no confidence in TM, and are circling with daggers poised to strike. There will be a vote by Conservative MPs at 8 pm tonight and if she loses then there will be a leadership election. If she wins she will be safe from another such vote for a year.
Some people think Remain campaigners in Tory-held constituencies should urge their MPs to back TM. This is for fear of someone worse. Leaving aside my detestation of the woman personally, I think she has for months and years had only one strategy, which was to kick the can down the road. Now she has run out of road and she has to go. Who will back her now? Having cancelled the debate she must have managed to anger them all.
Not that her contempt for Parliament is news. She has striven to keep them in the dark for years about the reality of Brexit and the legal advice the Government has received.
Britain’s constitution is exposed as the Heath Robinson contraption it always was. Under the strain of this situation, created (we should recall) by the Conservative Party entirely in order to outflank its right-wing rump and the lure of the rabble-rouser Farage, Parliament must find a way out of this mess.
And it’s not even 9 a.m. yet.
Josephine Hayes 