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There's already a couple of amendments to the PM's motion on extending Article 50, one from Ian Blackford and one from Peter Bone
Quick reminder.: This is the motion the PM must put before the House under the Cooper bill, which was passed last night.
It does give MPs the power to amend the requested date of extension. Blackford's amendment, weirdly enough, doesn't extend the date. It simply makes it inflexible, removing the right for the UK to leave ahead of the June 30 deadline.
Bone's is more along the lines of what you'd expect: setting the date for Monday April 15th. This is powerfully stupid even by his standards, because it doesn't even give you the weekend as a buffer against market shock.
I'd expect another amendment from the Remain side, maybe Caroline Lucas or an Indie Group type, with a much later date.
Yes I'm going to call them Indie Group, I think it sounds better. Sideburns and lager in the park and mopey guitar music.
And then they're going to debate this for ages tonight, and I will not be able to go see Shazam, fuckers are ruining my evening plans, and then I predict they will settle for the PM's set date of June 30th.
With Brexiters wanting a shorter extension and Remainers wanting a longer one, the Commons will treat May;s proposal as the happy medium compromise position.
Even though most MPs know June 30th is not long enough & that we're all acting like madmen because of artificially constrained deadlines, they'll still not demand longer because they don't have the balls. Much easier to hide under the shield the PM's offer provides.
And anyway, none of it matters, because once it's over the EU will say what is really happening tomorrow at the summit. May's presence in Europe today, rather than Westminster, tells you where the power lies.
The Speaker didn't move either of the amendments - so MPs are not going to press No.10 to change the requested date of the Article 50 extension.
That means that today's debate is really completely pointless. The only way today was going to be an upset was if MPs had jumped in and forced No.10 to shorten or lengthen the extension request.
It still functions as a shot across the bows of the govt though - MPs have shown that any later attempt to force no-deal can be resisted by the Commons pretty quickly using the same mechanism they adopted for the Cooper bill.
Owen Paterson talks about "the extraordinary anger outside this House". Is this true though? Is it really?
What is the actual evidence of this apart from a bunch of fascists outside parliament the other night, who'd have been there anyway?
I can confirm there is very little anger in the Marks and Spencer in north London.
Tim Loughton giving a quite disgraceful and morally poverty-stricken little speech in which he tries to appeal to the EU to reject our extension request. "Be in no doubt that you will unleash a further tsunami of chaos and uncertainty,."
Same hymn sheet as Mogg really. Twats United. "If the EU elections go ahead it is highly likely the UK will elect an army of Nigel Farage Mini-Mes who I'm afraid will wreak havoc in the parliament and wreck your calculations about the balance of power within the EU."
Just another patriot there, going over the head of the British parliament and British government, to try to convince the European Union to drive the country off a cliff edge.
Throughout this process, the main emotion I have felt is embarrassment. Just aching national embarrassment. And every day they find a reason to make you feel it all over again.
Motion passes by 420 to 110.
Parliament has backed May's request to extend Article 50 to June 30th.
Presumably those 110 Noes are all Tories. It's about the number expected I think - roughly compares to the number who opposed the statutory instrument to extend Article 50 the first time if I remember correctly.
Yep, just checked - that was 441 votes to 105. Nearly identical.
So this gives us a decent indication, given the repeated nature of the votes, of what the no-deal contingent in parliament is: About 110 MPs.
What happens now: May is holding talks in Europe today with Merkel and Macron. EU Summit tomorrow. Announcement of the offer from the EU side in the evening probably.
It's likely they will offer June 30th, December 31st, April 12th 2020, or some combination of the three. I think the best money is on the second.
There is no need for May to get parliamentary approval of the EU offer. She can accept it unilaterally, as long as it is no earlier than May 22nd.
This is because of the Lord Pannick amendment, which was passed this week, removing Commons right to have a say on No.10 response to a different EU offer.
(It's a good thing - if another Commons vote was needed, we could have fallen out by accident due to the eye-wateringly tight time frames).
Domestically, everything is slowly gearing up for European parliamentary participation. So there is now very little between us and a long extension.
This will almost certainly be structured so it can be cancelled any time there is a deal agreed by the Commons. That's the flexible extension offer.
Although, tbh, Article 50 was structured this way so if they had not offered this it's likely a legal challenge would have fixed it that way anyway.
But I suspect a long extension will draw the intensity out of this whole thing anyway. The motivation to agree to May's deal will probably dissipate as the deadline recedes.
Can you dissipate motivate? I dunno.
Here are the final party voting numbers - mostly Tories, plus DUP and some Labour lunatics
To my mind, any sense of this situation relaxing is a good one. Everyone is frazzled by exhaustion, nerves & tribal anger. It is not a good state to make long-term decisions.
So barring an upset tomorrow, things are looking kinda OK. I mean, not OK in the usual human sense, but in the horrible context in which we now live in. Things are looking better than gushingly fucking catastrophic. Which is an improvement.
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