A May Corbyn deal would blow up the government and might not even pass
What more is there to say about the humiliating sight of Britain’s Prime Minister traipsing around Europe pleading with the Chancellor of Germany and the President of France for an extension to the Article 50 process? Personally, I’m out of outrage and have moved into the “listening to Mahler’s fifth symphony and wishing I was on holiday in Provence” phase of Brexit.
The defence of Theresa May, as she makes her wretched journey, is that she has no choice. This has been the defence at every stage when May makes terrible choices – whether it be misleading her key Brexit ministers time and again, or playing the hard Brexiteer early on in a bid to prove her non-existent Brexit credentials, or failing to process what losing her majority meant, or failing to communicate clearly with the country, or obscuring tough choices, or in failing in the elementary Prime Ministerial task of persuasion because she cannot cajole or even do basic politics. A series of terrible decisions (not all May’s decisions, but a good many of them May’s decisions) led to this appalling situation in which the country is reduced to the role of a beggar on the international stage.
Anyway, on a happier note…
The talks between the Conservatives and Magic Grandpa and the Marxist Maniacs (the Labour opposition led by Jeremy Corbyn) continue to go round in circles. There is scepticism, rightly, that they will ever produce a deal between the parties.
If there is no deal done between the parties what happens then?
Britain is then trapped. Parliament, having convinced itself that no deal is the apocalypse rather than a manageable event, will stop the UK leaving the EU with no deal. As some of us have been saying to die hard Brexiteers, the Commons will even vote to revoke Article 50 if it comes to it. That was always the best reason to vote for May’s imperfect deal.
Perhaps this dreadful situation will finally get the May deal over the line in the next few weeks or months. It seems unlikely when all trust and any capacity for forward momentum is gone. It is Labour that has the forward momentum – as well as Marxist Momentum – now.
So, Britain sits there, squabbling, until MPs revoke or the Commons collapses into a confidence vote and an accidental general election or two. Goodness knows what the parties will say in their manifestos.
But what if there is a deal struck by May and Corbyn? A deal built as Labour and Remain-leaning members of the cabinet want on trapping the world’s fifth largest economy in a customs union.
It is hard to see how a wrecked government with a majority of two – two! – could endure or survive such a development. There has been a lot of talk in the past about looming resignations, but the level of anger and discontent among some hitherto loyal ministers in the wake of the decision to talk to Corbyn is quite something. Conversations I’ve had in recent days have taken me aback, such is the ferocity, tinged with despair, about where May has led the country.
“If she tries a customs union deal with Corbyn it looks like four, five or six members of the cabinet and 15 other ministers going,” a former loyalist told me this week. They would then all become enemies of the PM’s deal with Corbyn, in a situation when Number 10 needs every vote.
Which raises another problem. If – somehow – May and Corbyn get that unlikely deal, would it pass the Commons? It could struggle. Perhaps two thirds, certainly half, of Tory MPs are opposed to a customs union.
If Corbyn in addition secures a second referendum pledge, the bulk of Tory MPs will not wear that and would be likely to vote against the deal.
Equally, in reverse, if Corbyn fails to secure a second referendum pledge then how many of his MPs will be troop into the division lobby to deliver a Tory Brexit so monumentally rubbish that even two thirds of Tory MPs won’t back it?
There we have it. The next potential phase of the humiliation. May and Corbyn come to a deal. And it then fails to pass.
Anyway, sorry about that. Back to Mahler’s fifth symphony and dreaming of sun-kissed Provence.