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Right just catching up with parliament after recording @RemainiacsCast.
@RemainiacsCast Fucking great episode btw. @johnharris1969 guest. It's full on and I think has some quite important insights in it.
@RemainiacsCast @johnharris1969 Steve Brine, who resigned earlier this week to vote for indicative votes: ""The House of Commons has to solve this. This is the last roll of the dice. This is an opportunity for the House of Commons to surprise, in a good way, the British public."
@RemainiacsCast @johnharris1969 Quick hands-up on Brine. He's MPs for my home town. I never thought he was up to much. I was wrong. This week has shown that he has steel and independent judgement. Did Winchester proud.
@RemainiacsCast @johnharris1969 MPs are currently chewing over the business motion - so basically debating how they will debate. You can read it here, along with all the motions on Brexit. publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cm…
@RemainiacsCast @johnharris1969 If it goes through, it sets out a second day - next Monday - when MPs again take control of the timetable.
@RemainiacsCast @johnharris1969 The purpose of today is to whittle down the various options until three or four with substantial support can be found. Monday can then maybe whittle them down further.
@RemainiacsCast @johnharris1969 And you can see a summary of the various motions on Brexit which MPs will vote on today here
Mogg says the "assertion of parliamentary authority" in the Civil War ended with Pride's Purge. Fuck me has he got that one arse-over-face.
Pride's urge was indeed a very shameful moment in English history. Colonel Pride stood outside parliament and arrested certain Presbyterian MPs as they tried to enter. It resulted in the Rump Parliament, which was Cromwell's fig-leaf of democratic legitimacy.
But that was not the result of asserting parliamentary authority. It was MPs asserting parliamentary authority during the war which meant they could stand up to the king and kill absolute monarchy.
It was the result of something else entirely: Cromwell's use of the phrase 'the will of the people' to pretend that he possessed democratic legitimacy he had not earned, nor ever bothered to prove.
That phrase is always the favoured notion of despots, because it allows them to pretend they reflect the people's wishes without having to be restricted by democratic institutions which process and reveal them.
If anyone has the right to bring up Pride's Purge, it is not the people who have supported the use of an imaginary will of the people to sidestep parliament. Quite the fucking opposite.
Division. MPs now voting on the business motion.
This provides one last chance for the govt to try and kill the indicative votes process. It would also allow it to stop MPs taking control of the timetable next Monday, for a second round of votes.
Basically, it is the government's attempt to strangle the process of MPs taking control at birth. Govt unlikely to succeed, but these are feverish and unusual proceedings. Can't rule it out.
Business motion passed by 331 votes to 287.
It's on.
That was the govt's last chance to stop this happening. It's over. MPs are now taking control.
Bercow selects motions B (Baron) D (Boles) H (Eustice) J (Clarke) K (Corbyn) L (Cherry) M (Beckett) O (Fysh).
Decent smattering of options there. MPs will now debate the motions until 7 and then vote on them. Any Mp can withdraw their motion until 4pm. The voting slips will be printed and visible to MPs from about 6:30.
Fuck this is weird. After you watch parliament for a while you get used to the rhythm and language of the place. 'Division, clear the lobby,' all of that. But everything Bercow is saying is new.
Mundane stuff - all about the slip of paper, the colour, the process etc. But it is quite unlike what we usually get.
Bercow goes back to his refusal to allow third meaningful vote. Alarm bells.
He goes over what he did. Then says PM said she would make sure any third attempt would meet his requirements.
"I understand govt may be" bringing it forward Friday . "I do expect the govt to meet the test of change. They should not seek to circumvent my ruling."
Fucking hell lads that sounds quite a bit like he could reject it again.
That was a fucking warning alarm if ever I heard one.
If, as many of us had assumed, the attachment of EU's time offer to the deal constituted a substantial difference to the deal, it's unlikely he would have used that tone or language.
If I was the prime minister that would have sent a chill up my spine.
OK so here are the motions Bercow picked.
First up, Motion B, proposed by John Baron: Demands no-deal. It simply says we leave on April 12th with no deal. This is likely to get a proper twatting today.
Motion D: Nick Boles. This is the Commons Market 2.0 proposal, as apparently we have to call it. Proposes a Norway-Plus arrangement in which UK joins Efta, through that stays in the EEA agreement, & seeks an opt-out on customs so it can stay in the customs union.
Motion H: George Eustice. Classic Norway model (ie: without the plus). We would join Efta, and through that stay in the EEA, but without the customs union opt-out. Much, much easier to deliver. However, it would involve checks on the border in Ireland as it doesn't cover customs.
Motion J: Ken Clarke. Demands that UK negotiate, at a minimum, customs union membership, and then enshrine it in legislation so Brexiters can't fuck with it afterwards.
Motion K: Jeremy Corbyn. No-one knows what this means. It might be a fully thought out soft Brexit model which the party is either unwilling or unable to publicly explain. Or it could be a dribbled out piece of dogshit. No-one knows. Maybe even they don't know.
Soft Brexit flavoured fudge of an unspecified recipe, basically.
Motion L: Joanna Cherry. My personal favourite. It states that if there is still no deal two days before we are due to leave the EU, the govt must put forward a motion asking the Commons for support for no-deal. If MPs do not give it, it must immediately revoke Article 50.
Motion M: Margaret Beckett. People's Vote. It says that any deal, eve if it is just the withdrawal agreement or future relationship document, must be put to a public vote.
Motion O: Marcus Fysh. Fyshy by name, Fyshy by nature. Basically a two-year standstill period in which everything stays the same because reasons. And during that we negotiate a free trade agreement, I guess. Fuck knows.
That's the lot. That's your menu of horror.
Stephen Kinnock is currently up selling the Norway Plus plan. I'm not calling it Common Market 2.0. I'm not fucking doing it.
He's not a very inspiring thinker, but the content of the speech is good. Reminds the House that euroscepticism used to be very comfortable with Norway.
Also reminds them that there is this thing in the economy you may have heard of called 'services' and that it would be great if at some point someone bothered to mention it.
He says, rightly, that there is a veto at the national level for EU law in the EEA. However, for the record, this is never used.
If you want more details on the EEA model - and I mean skull-crushing, hope-extinguishing, bludgeoning fucking detail - I did a three-part piece on it a while back politics.co.uk/blogs/2017/09/…
Starmer now up. Sorry fr slow coverage - internet in parliament is super shit today.
He is critical of Boles amendment, but says he thinks it is credible and wants it to remain an option. That's really interesting.
Labour's plan is a single market relationship of some unspecified type - I suspect because they want to negotiate it from scratch rather than enter the pre-existing Norway version. But seems the party is open enough to back other soft-Brexit options.
Ken Clarke says he won't vote for what he prefers (continued EU membership) but "what I can live with". His motion is just for a customs union, but in his speech he backs full single market membership too.
"If we fail, if we're faced in a fortnight with no-deal, I think feeling in this House is so strong against that, we must all vote to revoke."
Bercow says the clock has now passed 4pm and no lead sponsors have tried to remove their motions. So they are all as announced.
Cherry now up for her motion. She says it has a lot of support and she wants Labour to back it too. She calls it a "revocation backstop". I know these phrases are irritating but that is a fair description.
In truth, if Labour was really committed to ruling out no-deal, as it insisted it was only a couple weeks ago, then it would back this thing. The reason it doesn't is because the word 'revoke' scares it shitless.
Grieve jumps in. "Point about this amendment is it is there in extremis. It is not there to summarily revoke Article 50, but only in circumstances where there is no alternative and no ability to get an extension."
Right, I need to pop off to do media for a bit. Back in about 45 mins. In the mean time, I'll be on LBC at 4:40 and CNN at 5pm.
Sorry about that. Alison McGovern is being rather brilliant. "Those of us who still believe in the idea of a European Union that would lift all, include all, and create peace in our continent, will campaign on that principle."
Predictably dreadful speech from Kate Hoey. "The one thing we can't see happen is the people of this United Kingdom being told 'you were too stupid to vote the right way, you were racist to vote the right way and now we want you to vote again'."
Phil Wilson currently making a speech. He's one of the authors of the referendum lock amendment. "How do we know this is what people voted for unless we ask them?" Yes you put it that way it sounds quite simple.
(It is quite simple)
"Brexit started with the people, it should end with the people."
Not gonna lie. This debate is pretty fucking dull right now.
Bercow says voting is about to start. The time window is half an hour. For some reason I cannot understand it is apparently going to take several hours to count.
