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| Version 2 | Version 3 |
|---|---|
| Are we at Brexit yet? May’s indecision means we’re still in the car park | Are we at Brexit yet? May’s indecision means we’re still in the car park |
| (about 2 months later) | |
| Theresa May lives to fight another day – then another and another. Wednesday night’s deflating slow puncture of a rebellion is a good symbol for what’s ahead: no clarity, opaque compromise, everyone claiming victory. | Theresa May lives to fight another day – then another and another. Wednesday night’s deflating slow puncture of a rebellion is a good symbol for what’s ahead: no clarity, opaque compromise, everyone claiming victory. |
| Yet it was an important moment as parliament secured just enough say over the final deal, with the Speaker put in charge. The Mail’s renewed assault on John Bercow over bullying allegations this morning proves its significance – but it wastes its malice, since all Speakers stand up for parliament against government steamrolling, whoever succeeds him. | Yet it was an important moment as parliament secured just enough say over the final deal, with the Speaker put in charge. The Mail’s renewed assault on John Bercow over bullying allegations this morning proves its significance – but it wastes its malice, since all Speakers stand up for parliament against government steamrolling, whoever succeeds him. |
| To voters already wearied by pernickety process, sitting in the back seat asking “Are we nearly there yet?”, the answer is we haven’t even left the car park. Prepare for Brexit ad infinitum. As the European parliament’s Brexit leader Guy Verhofstadt warned the Commons this week, Brexit is not an event, there is no decisive moment, but an interminable process that stretches maybe 20 years ahead. We may be paying alimony until 2064. Unpicking and restitching 45 years of every jot and tittle of our interwoven lives will take what former Europe minister Denis MacShane warns will be Brexiternity. | To voters already wearied by pernickety process, sitting in the back seat asking “Are we nearly there yet?”, the answer is we haven’t even left the car park. Prepare for Brexit ad infinitum. As the European parliament’s Brexit leader Guy Verhofstadt warned the Commons this week, Brexit is not an event, there is no decisive moment, but an interminable process that stretches maybe 20 years ahead. We may be paying alimony until 2064. Unpicking and restitching 45 years of every jot and tittle of our interwoven lives will take what former Europe minister Denis MacShane warns will be Brexiternity. |
| A bad day for Grieve, the rebel Tory who forgot how to rebel | John Crace | A bad day for Grieve, the rebel Tory who forgot how to rebel | John Crace |
| May is smirking. Labour is fuming, having dragged MPs from their sick bed to support the Grieve amendment. White-flagger Dominic Grieve is wittering on about a gentler kinder politics of compromise. He’s right; the Brexit air is poisonous, but he’s wrong to think Brexiters will turn any less savage if he lets them win every symbolic victory. But for all the mockery, secretly he must be satisfied that he galvanised enough threat of rebellion to panic May into giving way. His legal advice tells him that if there’s no Brexit deal, MPs can trigger a vote. | May is smirking. Labour is fuming, having dragged MPs from their sick bed to support the Grieve amendment. White-flagger Dominic Grieve is wittering on about a gentler kinder politics of compromise. He’s right; the Brexit air is poisonous, but he’s wrong to think Brexiters will turn any less savage if he lets them win every symbolic victory. But for all the mockery, secretly he must be satisfied that he galvanised enough threat of rebellion to panic May into giving way. His legal advice tells him that if there’s no Brexit deal, MPs can trigger a vote. |
| Stand back and consider where we are, or aren’t, two years after the vote. What was once a “crucial” EU summit this week will pass with yet again with nothing resolved. Crowing over his own defeat last night, Jacob Rees-Mogg claimed: “This means the prime minister goes to negotiations in June with full strength.” To do what? Our leader’s indecision means there is still no idea how to fix the Irish border question and keep to her impossible red lines, but she’s adept at driving round and round inside the car park. | Stand back and consider where we are, or aren’t, two years after the vote. What was once a “crucial” EU summit this week will pass with yet again with nothing resolved. Crowing over his own defeat last night, Jacob Rees-Mogg claimed: “This means the prime minister goes to negotiations in June with full strength.” To do what? Our leader’s indecision means there is still no idea how to fix the Irish border question and keep to her impossible red lines, but she’s adept at driving round and round inside the car park. |
| Should the 48% remainers – (most polls suggest now 52%) – despair? No, last night’s vote was a model for the crab-like way they will progress, because the softest of Brexits is the only possible outcome. May knows it, everyone but the Breximaniacs knows it. Five bills are still to pass, where compromise is certain, if chaotically achieved. Next month comes the vital vote on the customs union, the decider on Ireland’s border and on the Dover/Calais gridlock. Brexiteers know that if on Brexit day, the 29 March 2019, everything seizes up, they will be blamed – and they will be done for. | Should the 48% remainers – (most polls suggest now 52%) – despair? No, last night’s vote was a model for the crab-like way they will progress, because the softest of Brexits is the only possible outcome. May knows it, everyone but the Breximaniacs knows it. Five bills are still to pass, where compromise is certain, if chaotically achieved. Next month comes the vital vote on the customs union, the decider on Ireland’s border and on the Dover/Calais gridlock. Brexiteers know that if on Brexit day, the 29 March 2019, everything seizes up, they will be blamed – and they will be done for. |
| Tonight in his Mansion House speech, the chancellor will tell of taxes to be raised for the NHS, with no word of the big Brexit dividend lie. Yet the prime minister still uses it unashamedly in her letter to Tory supporters this week. Soft Brexiters who are tearing their hair out at the barefaced balderdash should be reassured that big Brexit lies will eventually implode: facts will out. | Tonight in his Mansion House speech, the chancellor will tell of taxes to be raised for the NHS, with no word of the big Brexit dividend lie. Yet the prime minister still uses it unashamedly in her letter to Tory supporters this week. Soft Brexiters who are tearing their hair out at the barefaced balderdash should be reassured that big Brexit lies will eventually implode: facts will out. |
| So far, the Brexit press suppresses economic reality, but eventually their readers will find out as they feel it in their pockets. Pro-Brexit commentators dishonestly blur what’s happening: the rise in wages has stopped, growth in the first quarter stalled at 0.1%, and the UK is now bottom of the G7 league, whereas in 2016 we were top. The trade deficit is growing, exports tumbling, productivity at 0.2% is a mile behind similar countries, while inward investment is drying up due to Brexit, with companies are moving away: the Land Rover Discovery will be made in Slovakia. Investment at home stalls as companies sit on money, afraid of the Brexit fallout. | So far, the Brexit press suppresses economic reality, but eventually their readers will find out as they feel it in their pockets. Pro-Brexit commentators dishonestly blur what’s happening: the rise in wages has stopped, growth in the first quarter stalled at 0.1%, and the UK is now bottom of the G7 league, whereas in 2016 we were top. The trade deficit is growing, exports tumbling, productivity at 0.2% is a mile behind similar countries, while inward investment is drying up due to Brexit, with companies are moving away: the Land Rover Discovery will be made in Slovakia. Investment at home stalls as companies sit on money, afraid of the Brexit fallout. |
| Labour must do its bit to break this endless Brexit deadlock | Gaby Hinsliff | Labour must do its bit to break this endless Brexit deadlock | Gaby Hinsliff |
| Philip Hammond, the old undertaker, will never take the necessary corrective measures – a massive state investment in housing, transport and public infrastructure to kickstart the ailing beast. But the idea that this Brexit downturn is any great new opportunity abides only in the anti-state ideology of those who think chaos is “creative” – the likes of Liam Fox and a few on the left. | Philip Hammond, the old undertaker, will never take the necessary corrective measures – a massive state investment in housing, transport and public infrastructure to kickstart the ailing beast. But the idea that this Brexit downturn is any great new opportunity abides only in the anti-state ideology of those who think chaos is “creative” – the likes of Liam Fox and a few on the left. |
| Reasons to believe the hard Brexiters can’t and won’t win are legion. Cheer up, and trust that even if the Brexit process drags on for ever, and the sound and fury is with the extremes, step by step the sane, the practical and the pragmatic are likely to hold sway. But the essential backstop is the people. Seeing no Brexit prospect that remotely resembles the referendum offer, but instead seeing the shambolic prospect of worsening failures, the people are the ones to vote on which way to turn if the deal finally laid out on the table is no feast, but a pauper’s portion. | Reasons to believe the hard Brexiters can’t and won’t win are legion. Cheer up, and trust that even if the Brexit process drags on for ever, and the sound and fury is with the extremes, step by step the sane, the practical and the pragmatic are likely to hold sway. But the essential backstop is the people. Seeing no Brexit prospect that remotely resembles the referendum offer, but instead seeing the shambolic prospect of worsening failures, the people are the ones to vote on which way to turn if the deal finally laid out on the table is no feast, but a pauper’s portion. |
| So, turn up in Pall Mall, London, on Saturday at midday to join what looks set to be a huge and cheerful march for a people’s vote to assert the democratic right for everyone to decide what comes next. Expect a lot of the Ode to Joy, a good counterweight to the Brexiteer furies. | So, turn up in Pall Mall, London, on Saturday at midday to join what looks set to be a huge and cheerful march for a people’s vote to assert the democratic right for everyone to decide what comes next. Expect a lot of the Ode to Joy, a good counterweight to the Brexiteer furies. |
| • Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist | • Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist |
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