Tag: Commons

Eight votes on alternative Brexit options, put before the Commons after MPs seized control of the parliamentary process from the government, resulted in no majority for any of them, although the vote was close on one softer Brexit option. Oliver Letwin, the Tory former minister whose amendment created the process, said this was to be expected, and that if May’s deal is defeated for a third time if put to MPs on Friday, this could forge unity if the only other option was no deal on 12 April. Letwin said he had expected no majorities on Wednesday. He said: “MPs will be voting on the basis of seeing what happened last time. “If it doesn’t then I think people will finally see that that isn’t going to happen by 12 April and I think quite a lot of Tories who didn’t vote for any of the options because they were, perfectly honourably, taking the view that until they had a last chance to vote for the prime minister’s deal they didn’t want to commit themselves to anything else, may come round and say: OK, we’ll choose among these options.” The indicative votes capped a dramatic day in Westminster during which May promised her MPs she would step down from No 10 for the next stage of the Brexit process if her deal is passed. But soon afterwards the Democratic Unionist party announced it still could not back the plan, making success in the Commons much less likely. “It’s very difficult to translate how people vote the first time, when they don’t know how other people are voting, to how they will vote when they can see how other people are voting, under new circumstances. Although there was no majority for one particular option, I think it showed that there were areas of commonality.” She told Today: “What’s imperative now over the next few days is that parties across the house work with each other to find reasonable compromises to try and navigate a way out of this.” At the same time, Conservative Brexiters said they had not given up on their plan. A proposal to leave the EU without a deal on 12 April, put forward by the Tory MP John Baron, lost by 160 votes to 400. He told Today: “The legal position is that if we cannot agree a course of action other than article 50 then the natural default position is that we leave on no-deal, WTO terms.

Jeremy Corbyn has urged Theresa May to “either listen and change course, or go” in a Brexit-dominated prime minister’s questions which appeared to lay down the most likely battle lines for a series of indicative Commons votes on seeking a consensus departure plan. Corbyn, in return, repeatedly urged May to embrace Labour’s idea of a customs union-based exit plan, and accused the prime minister of using intransigence as a means to force MPs into backing her deal in a likely third meaningful vote. “Why is she prepared to carry on risking jobs and industry in another attempt to, yet again, run down the clock and try to blackmail the MPs behind her in supporting a deal that’s already been twice rejected?” he asked. When May declined to say directly if she would back any plan that emerged from the series of indicative votes scheduled for later on Wednesday, Corbyn said: “I think the house, and perhaps more importantly the whole country, deserves to know the answer to that question.” He continued: “This country is on hold while the government is in complete paralysis. to knife crime, have been neglected. Instead she’s stoking further division, she’s unable to resolve the central issues facing Britain today, and she is frankly unable to govern. Corbyn set to whip MPs to back public vote as frontbench threatens revolt Read more “The prime minister faces a very clear choice, the one endorsed by the country and many of her party: either listen and change course, or go. Her Brexit plan, she also argued, would deliver “the benefits of the customs union while enabling us to have an independent free trade policy”. He said: “It’s a bit strange when a Conservative prime minister says she doesn’t want what the business community want. In the first PMQs question, Conservative Brexiter Andrew Bridgen said his constituents would “never trust the prime minister again”.

It gives the party’s chief whip an automatic seat at the top table in Downing Street because Theresa May has to rely him to steer Brexit through an increasingly hostile House of Commons. With 94 Tories claiming they will vote down May’s final deal, the scale of the task ahead of Smith in the run up to the meaningful final vote on 11 December is, colleagues acknowledge, considerable. In the short time since, “the chief”, as his staff call him, has become one of May’s most important advisers, alongside Gavin Barwell, her chief of staff, and Peter Hill, her private secretary, helping with not just keeping the party’s 315 MPs in line but shaping wider political strategy. Chief whips are meant to be seen but not heard, but a fortnight ago, as the first phase of the Brexit deal was concluded and ministers were threatening to resign, the loyal Smith was in Downing Street telling reporters that May had “worked day in and day out” and “stuck with it through a really, really tough year or two”. When it comes to the party’s rebellious backbenchers, however, Smith has yet to get stuck in, although some say this is reflective of an attempt to take a “softly softly” approach. A key tactic for the Brexit vote is to allow all the other options to be voted on via MPs submitting amendments, and let them fail first, forcing MPs to consider May’s deal as the only realistic option on the table. The Smith argument is that none of the various alternatives command a majority in the Commons. The job of the government whips is to get the prime minister’s business through the Commons, monitoring the mood of backbenchers, picking up concerns early, soothing, persuading and threatening where necessary to ensure MPs troop through the division lobbies behind the party leader. There are also two actual whips on Smith’s Downing Street office mantelpiece – one with a bone handle and the other black leather with metal studs. The Yorkshire MP entered the government as a junior whip in 2015 and was promoted to become deputy a year later, where he caught the eye of the new prime minister.