Brexit Crackup

While the media remains transfixed by Trump's Helsinki performance, the Conservative government of Theresa May finally appears to have slammed into a wall on Brexit. For the last couple of days votes on May's Brexit legislation have been taking place in parliament. Robert Stevens explains in "May government in meltdown over Brexit":

The votes imperilled May’s government, as she was forced to accept four amendments to the Bill from the hard-Brexit faction—which effectively wrecked the agreement on a soft-Brexit she had finally reached with her Cabinet just a week earlier. This deal was reached only under intense pressure from broad sections of business who demand continued access to the European Single market—the UK’s largest trading partner.

To wreck the Chequers agreement, around 20 Tories in the hard-Brexit European Research Group faction, led by backbencher and potential leadership challenger Jacob Rees-Mogg, threatened to vote against the government if their amendments to the bill were not accepted. The most divisive of the four Monday amendments overturned the complex UK/EU tariff proposals contained in the agreement reached at May’s country residence, Chequers, under which the UK would collect tariffs on goods on behalf of the EU. 

According to the Daily Telegraph, the party’s “Eurosceptics have set up a ‘party within a party’ with a highly organised whipping operation among Tory Eurosceptic MPs to try to frustrate Theresa May’s Brexit plans.” 

It detailed how “[m]ore than 100 Eurosceptic Tory MPs are now on a WhatsApp group co-ordinated by former Brexit minister Steve Baker who is giving them voting instructions.”

Leading soft-Brexit Tory Dominic Grieve said his party’s pro-Brexit rebels appeared “willing to plunge the country into a serious crisis to achieve the purity of their objective.”

Following the 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU, Prime Minister David Cameron resigned to be replaced by May—who was a supporter of Remain but pledged to implement Brexit. This compromise has blown up, not simply due to events in Britain but because these events have been shaped by the extraordinary antagonisms between the United States and European powers following the election of US President Donald Trump.

A path forward for May's soft Brexit appears blocked, but it doesn't appear that the hard Brexiters have the votes to lead. So impasse and a cliff's edge Brexit crackup seem the safe bet here.