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Let’s be very clear about this. The government has set a devastating trap for MPs today. It’s pretending the vote is just about the ‘admin’ of passing the withdrawal agreement, with debate on political declaration to follow. It’s a lie. Please, MPs, do not fall for it.
EU gave 22/5 as new date if gov can pass withdrawal agreement (not necessarily political declaration) by today. If MPs do so, we’ll be on a conveyor belt either to passing May’s deal unamended, or leaving with no-deal at all, and nobody will be able to do a thing about it.
Hate backstop? Tough. Want to negotiate a customs union? Forget it. We’ll be sucked into what May has wanted from the start, and what Parliament has always sought to avoid: the take-or-leave-it of May’s negotiated national humiliation or the unique catastrophe of no deal at all.
EU will offer no further extensions because they can’t. 12 April is deadline for European election notification, and if we don’t make that we can’t be in EU after 22 May. MPs will be forced to do whatever May tells them. It will be the purest autocracy we’ve seen in modern times.
Even worse, Brexit nihilists will finally have Britain exactly where they want it: against an immovable deadline. You think they’ll vote for Withdrawal Act? Don’t be naive. They’ll filibuster, oppose, do anything they can to stop this deal and get the sadistic no-deal they crave.
If Parliament is fooled into voting for May’s deal today it will make this country desperate and defenceless. It may as well abolish itself for the next few years, because it will surrender any power it thinks it still has. You’ve been warned.
