Chris

Well that’s just bizarre.

It gives Parliament the right to vote on the way the Backstop is brought to an end. Ordinarily as the Backstop forms part of an international treaty you would expect the government to retain that sort of power.

This afternoon is all about MPs showing, in as theatrical a way as possible, that they no longer trust the government and are therefore minded to give the legislature the powers and responsibilities normally entrusted to the executive.

In practical terms, the withdrawal agreement forbids either side from terminating the Backstop unilaterally so it doesn’t matter whether parliament or government has the power, they can’t actually use it without being in violation of treaty. I guess it’s possible the message being sent here is “we don’t trust Teresa May not to violate an international treaty”, but as I said, it’s just theatrics. Things would have to get extremely, unpleasantly bad before any British government would contemplate doing such a thing, so it’s essentially a moot point.