Chris

Given the article you posted the other day speculating as to the nature of the weakness in the Benn Act (it was you, wasn’t it?), there’s an interesting conundrum brewing.

If Bozza comes back to Westminster with a draft deal and puts it before Parliament, what is the rebel alliance to do next? As the Benn Act is seemingly overridden, in the presence of an agreed deal, by provisions in the earlier legislation, then if they approve it they lose their last possible means of delaying Brexit long enough to push public opinion in favour of another referendum (and, let’s be honest, cancelling Brexit by fair means or foul is all they’re really interested in). Notwithstanding anything in the Benn Act, the procedures previously enacted have the effect, more or less, of letting Boris just get on with it. We leave on 31 October and the inevitable Supreme Court bun fight becomes a side show in which the very worst Boris can be accused of is struggling to discern the will of a parliament so willing to contradict its own Acts.

But if they don’t vote for any modified withdrawal agreement Bozza brings back from Brussels, what then? The cat is out of the bag; it becomes abundantly clear that Parliament can’t, or won’t, affirm anything whatsoever with regards to Brexit. What moral high ground Jezza thinks he has, vanishes faster than ice in Greenland. Even if Boris actually doesn’t have a loophole in his back pocket, standing up against that will make him riotously popular; if he does (and it seems vastly unlikely that he doesn’t), then deploying it will be taken as a great big middle finger to the Brexit-hating Labour Party. Labour can kiss the north of England goodbye just as surely as it has Scotland.

Right now, Jezza and his rebel alliance think they have been tremendously clever, but actually their position is I think really quite precarious.