Brexit: what happens next?

The issue of how much say Parliament will have on a final Brexit deal remains unclear after Theresa May made a last-minute concession on the EU Withdrawal Bill yesterday in order to avoid a Tory rebellion.

The Prime Minister eventually won the vote to repeal Amendment 19, by 324 votes to 298, but only after apparently promising Tory Remainers that the Government would address their concerns in a fresh amendment when the Bill returns to the House of Lords next week.

Where are we?

The newspaper coverage of the vote will not have improved the mood at Downing Street this morning, with The Times branding the state of the Brexit talks as “embarrassing”. May “ultimately has herself to blame”, as the “defining feature” of her Brexit approach “is one of weakness”, adds the paper.

“The Government is riven over the semantics of amendments to cover hypothetical outcomes of negotiations that should be proceeding at speed but are now stalled,” the editorial continues. “The Conservatives and the country need leadership on the central question of the day. They are offered only cliches and can-kicking. It will not do.”

The Sun’s leader column has an ominous warning for Remainer rebels of the fate that lies in store for the UK if they succeed in blocking or watering down Brexit. “Such is the contempt these MPs have for democracy when it delivers a result they don’t like,” the paper says. “They seem neither to know nor care what they will unleash.”

The Tories are not the only party split over the EU Withdrawal Bill. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn saw 89 of his MPs ignoring his orders to abstain on another Lords amendment calling for UK membership of the European Economic Area (EEA) and a soft Brexit. “What was even more striking was the way both sides in the Brexit debate defied him,” says HuffPost’s Paul Waugh. “There were 74 for the EEA amendment, and 15 against.”

If those 15 MPs who voted against were to side with the Brexiteers in coming votes, “that really will throw the arithmetic up in the air”, Waugh notes.

So what happens next?

All eyes are on May’s government to see what compromise amendment it puts forward for the Bill ahead of its return to the Lords on Monday.

“Get ready for a fresh outbreak of Tory hostilities when Theresa May reveals whether it is the Remainers or the Brexiteers in her party getting shafted by her partial climbdown on Parliament’s power to shape the Brexit talks,” says Politico’s Jack Blanchard.

Brexiteers argue that citizens had a meaningful vote on referendum day and that MPs voted to trigger Article 50 last year. “Anything more in their eyes is simply obstructionist,” says the Financial Times’s Sebastian Payne.

Remainers are similarly stubborn. “They believe that MPs must have the final say on what will be the most momentous decision in modern British history - and they are convinced that there is a majority in the Commons for a softer exit,” Payne writes.

Meanwhile, if the Lords “feel the new government amendment overly waters down their views on a meaningful final Brexit vote, they could amend the amendment, or even insert their own amendment, returning things to how they were”, says The Guardian.

The Bill will then be sent back to the Commons in a process of parliamentary “ping-pong”, as its known. This could happen as many as nine times, with the Bill being tweaked and rehashed. However, “some sort of compromise is expected”, as “ultimately it will be a matter of whom May wants to outrage”, the paper adds.

And then?

Next will come the not-so-small matter of thrashing out the UK’s future relationship with the EU, when the Trade Bill returns to the Commons in July. The Government still hopes to be ready to present a deal in principle with the EU, in the form of a withdrawal agreement and a political declaration laying out an agreed “framework for the future relationship”, by October 2019. That hope survives despite the continued sticking point of the Irish border issue and regulatory allignment. 

The Spectator’s James Kirkup has a word of warning for those anticipating a conclusion to all of the ongoing Brexit wrangles.

“Brexit will never end. Brexit will never be over. There will be never be a time ‘after Brexit’,” he predicts.

“Because ‘Brexit’ doesn’t mean leaving the EU. It means ending our current EU membership and defining a new relationship with the EU, and that relationship, like all our international partnerships, isn’t static but constantly evolves.”