A meaningless vote

So the government got it's EU Withdrawal Bill through, though notably all the discussion was about what happens if the negotiations fail, either because no deal is reached with the EU or because Parliament rejects whatever the government comes out of it with. In contrast, meaningful discussions about what should (or could) be negotiated have been deferred. This despite the fact that the clock isn't just running, the sands are running out, to mangle my metaphors.

The latest round of shenanigans was about what happens if MPs vote down the Brexit deal, or announces before 21 January that no deal has been struck or 21 January is reached without a deal being struck. The issue was whether the statement the government will the bring forward would be amendable by MPs, giving them their "meaningful vote". The government wanted to make the statement in this potentially hypothetical situation "neutral" and therefore not amendable. It has fudged the point for now by saying that, under normal House of Commons standing orders, it will be for the Speaker to decide whether the government's motion, as drafted, is amendable.

I'm left wondering if this concession to Tory rebels is a pure sop, as it seems to me the Speaker has the power to decide all sorts of things about what is debated, for example in response to an opposition emergency debate motion.

So, that's alright, it will all be up to John Bercow, probably the worst and most partial Speaker in my lifetime. What could possibly go wrong?

But does any of this matter anyway? Danny Finkelstein argued cogently in the Times* yesterday that Parliament having a "meaningful vote" maximises the chances of a hard Brexit, the opposite of what the Tory rebels want to see because it ignores the interests and powers of the other 27 EU countries (I think I'll call this the "rump" of the EU....) as well as being naive about the position of Labour and underestimating the resolve of the supporters of a hard Brexit. The whole article is well worth reading so I won't attempt to precis it here but I was taken by Finkelstein's summary of Labour's game plan and its implications:

"One of the most important things to understand is that Labour is not the party of a soft Brexit. The objective of the Labour leadership is only this: to bring down the government and defeat it in an election. Fair enough, I suppose. It has therefore announced objectives for a Brexit deal that are impossible for any negotiator to achieve. This will allow it to vote against any deal and keep voting against it.

And at the same time it has insisted it won't do anything to stop Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn doesn't want to and a number of his MPs worry it would antagonise Labour leavers.

So, come the end of January, Labour cannot be relied upon to vote for a second referendum. It might back one, but it might also just go on voting against a deal, leaving it to the government to sort out the resulting mess. If this causes a crisis, that is a good thing from a Labour leadership point of view, because it might bring down the government.

We could therefore end up two months from Brexit day without a legal way forward. The EU insisting that we are running out of time and Parliament unable to agree even the referendum that might stop Brexit."

For Labour, truly, the meaningful vote would be meaningless for Brexit, but not for their ambitions.

I've always thought that the Labour position on Brexit, saying it wants to be in "a" customs union without recognising that what it is saying would be entirely unacceptable to the EU, is mischief making in the extreme. But then that's their game plan: to get their extremist clique in power whatever way they can.

How unedifying. And how worrying.

* https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/remainer-rebels-may-pave-way-to-hard-brexit-f06jglrvj