Hopes that Britain’s course to Brexit was finally on track were dashed on Thursday as several ministerial resignations — including of Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab — and a push for a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Theresa May triggered a new political crisis, threatening the future of the deal thrashed out earlier this week.
Ms. May has shown no sign of giving in. “Am I going to see this through? Yes,” she said at a press conference in the evening in which she appealed to the public, pointing to the centrality of her deal for keeping Britain’s manufacturing sector (and associated jobs) alive, as well as avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland, and ending free movement. “Leadership is about taking the right decision not the easy ones.”
Unknown consequences
She warned that failing to unite behind the deal would lead to unknown consequences, taking Britain down a path of “deep and grave uncertainty.”
Earlier in the day during a three-hour session in the House of Commons, she also warned, “We can choose to leave with no deal. We can risk no Brexit at all. Or we can choose to unite and support the best deal that can be negotiated.”
As a British government deal on Brexit threatened to come apart on Thursday, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the influential hard-Brexit campaign European Research Group, submitted a letter to the Conservative Party’s 1922 committee calling for a no-confidence vote in Prime Minister Theresa May’s leadership.
If the committee, made up of Conservative backbenchers, received letters from enough MPs calling for this, it would trigger a vote of no-confidence in the Prime Minister, and a leadership battle for the party and country.
“The problem was having a Remain Prime Minister,” Mr. Rees-Mogg told journalists after the submission of his letter. “This is not Brexit, this is a failure of government policy,” he insisted.
‘A dead deal’
During a heated session of the House of Commons on Thursday, Ms. May faced a political pummelling from all sides of the House on a deal that one MP described as already “dead in the water.”
Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn accused her of a “huge and damaging failure” after two years of bungled negotiations, while the party’s Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer indicated that the party would be voting against the deal.
“Hard” Brexiteers, including Mr. Rees-Mogg, expressed their dismay at the terms of the deal, with one labelling it a “Hotel California” Brexit deal that failed to deliver the decisive sovereignty that had been promised to voters.
Still others, such as Conservative People’s Vote campaigner Anna Soubry, reiterated their call for a second referendum as the only way out of the political crisis that Britain found itself in.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), on whose vote the government has depended since the May 2017 election, has also made plain its opposition to the deal. “The choice is now clear. Stand up for the whole of the United Kingdom or vote for a vassal state with the break-up of the United Kingdom,” said Nigel Dodds, the DUP’s deputy leader.
A defiant May continued to reject these calls insisting that Brexit was a long-term project that did involve the end of free movement, the end of the remit of the European Court of Justice and the maintenance of the integrity of the country.
She insisted that the backstop as it was set out in the deal was the only way for the government to ensure that they met the promises made to all the countries of the United Kingdom, including the pledge to the people of Northern Ireland that a hard border would be avoided at all costs. “A good Brexit, a Brexit that is in the national interest is still possible. We have made a decisive breakthrough,” she told MPs.
The British pound tumbled amid the uncertainty, after rising earlier when a definite deal appeared to be on the cards. Businesses had, while expressing their caution — particularly around the lack of detail on the future relationship plans within the document — welcomed the certainty it offered around the transition period and on the avoidance of a hard border.
Three scenarios
The road forward now remains unclear. “The real question is what happens to the Prime Minister now,” says Anand Menon, director of the U.K. in a Changing Europe initiative.
He said that there was a scenario where the Prime Minister could still win a no-confidence vote and move forward with the deal though the numbers appeared against her, with at least 40 Conservative MPs set to oppose her.
The three scenarios: Britain getting a deal along the lines that Ms. May had negotiated, a no-deal crash out of the EU and a second referendum now were all possibilities, he said. “What we are confronted with is a succession of highly implausible outcomes, one of which will happen but it’s extremely hard to know which.”
