People’s voice is only way out of Brexit debacle

British Prime Minister Theresa May in Brussels. Picture: Getty Images

Desperate, no-holds-barred scrapping has become Britain’s day-to-day mode of government.

On Monday a landmark vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal was cancelled at the last minute, ­ambushing ministers who were giving live-broadcast interviews confirming that it would definitely go ahead.

The next day May began a tour of Europe, promising to get better terms on the deal, only to be politely rebuffed in every capital she visited. The Prime Minister ­arrived home to find her own Conservative Party planning a vote of no confidence in its leader. She won, but only after promising that she would step down before the next election. Even then, 117 of 317 Tory MPs voted against her.

It is a grim spectacle, but the upshot of the latest bruising episode is that May staggers away bloodied to fight another round. The hardline Brexit bullies in her party have been shown up for the reckless obsessives they are. But the more abiding truth for May is the scale of the rebellion, which has demonstrated that she has no realistic hope of getting her plan for Brexit through parliament. And it is not just her plan: none of the possible Brexits commands a majority of MPs.

May needs to recognise that she and the country have only one way out of this impasse. That is to go over the heads of MPs and ask the people directly.

Her deal, which the EU has ­already signed off but which parliament must still approve, would keep the entire United Kingdom in a customs union and extensive regulatory alignment until both sides had settled on a comprehensive new relationship, which might take years. During that time, Britain would be subject to European rules and unable to sign its own trade deals. Hard-Brexiteers say this compromise amounts to vassalage, but they have failed to come up with any ­alternative plan able to win over their colleagues in parliament.

With the failure of their rebellion, Britain dodged a blow to the head. Had May lost, the Tories’ 124,000 party members would have chosen a new leader — and thus a new prime minister — to see Brexit through. They may well have picked the more Eurosceptic of the shortlisted candidates, increasing the chance of a bad-tempered, chaotic and ruinous no-deal exit.

May has proved a poor prime minister and a disastrous campaigner. Her planned departure before the scheduled 2020 election, along with the defeat of the Brexit monomaniacs, ought to ­accelerate the promotion of the promising next generation of Tory MPs, to replace the duds who have served the country so ineptly.

All this means May’s premiership now has but one purpose — and it is a monumental one: to steer a split party and a minority government through the most complex and divisive peacetime transition in modern British history.

The danger is that May, a serial postponer, will try to run down the clock to within a couple of months of Brexit day on March 29. She might calculate that parliament will then have little choice but to back her deal, because the alternative will be leaving with a calamitous no-deal.

Such a gun-to-the-head Brexit would guarantee rancour and unhappiness across Britain for years to come. But this week’s confidence vote makes it clearer than ever that waiting another month or two will not magically create a majority in favour of her agreement.

Labour and other opposition parties are set against her blueprint, as are more than 100 of her own Tory MPs. May’s European travels this week have confirmed that she has little prospect of winning enough changes to satisfy the rebels. The deal is no more alive than it was when the government postponed the vote in a panic on Monday.

If May wants her agreement to prevail, she must call a second referendum.

Many Conservative MPs are dead against a second vote (though a lot of them voted for May in 2016 only to demand the chance to think again this week). Now that they have used up their one shot at deposing May, she can call a parliamentary vote on her deal without the risk of being brought down by her own side. Heavy defeat could still provoke a no-confidence motion by the ­Labour Party. But few if any Tory MPs, or those of the allied Democratic Unionist Party, want to see a Labour government, let alone one led by the far-left Jeremy Corbyn.

When that parliamentary vote fails, she will be justified in proposing a new plebiscite. Many in ­Labour would back her. If May truly believes that her deal is what the country voted for, a fresh referendum should hold no fear for her. Now that getting out of the EU has a definition, it is manifestly in the interests of the country to have a say on whether it still wants to leave. This week, more than ever, the chaos in Westminster points to the need to go back to the people.