Another Momentous Brexit Vote in Parliament

The zombie drama of Brexit plods to yet another (faked?) climax today with a re-vote in parliament of prime minister Theresa May's "divorce deal" with the European Union. The last vote in January May suffered the largest parliamentary defeat by a prime minister in the modern era.

To prevent that from happening again, May has been engaged in what seems to be constant shuttling to the continent to pry concessions from EU leadership. Those concessions concern what is referred to as the "Irish Backstop." May's coalition government is kept afloat by ten MPs from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland. The DUP, and many Tory Brexit ultras, don't like the way May's "divorce deal," absent a comprehensive agreement to be negotiated over the next couple of years, keeps Northern Ireland yoked to the Republic of Ireland -- and, hence, the UK to the EU -- perpetually.

May's last-ditch trip to Strasbourg yesterday to wrangle some sort of compelling statement from European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker turned out to be a bust. Today May's attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, according to NYT's Stephen Castle, said that last-minute pledges from the bloc did not fundamentally alter the legal status of the agreement. Juncker proclaimed there will be no more interpretations of interpretations.

So the vote, which happens at Westminster tonight, will go much like the one in January, with maybe the margin of defeat not as great. The reason we know this is that the DUP and the Brexit hard-liners are requesting that May postpone the vote.

Once May's deal is defeated again, two votes will take place later in the week. The first will be whether MPs want a no-deal, or crash-out, Brexit; the next, will be to ask the EU for an extension of the March 29 Article 50 deadline.

I'd say that it appears like progress might actually be visible. But I've been fooled before. If May loses tonight, as she should, and parliament successfully stages the vote first against crash-out and then postponement, parliament will be running the show and May will be merely a corpse propped up in the showroom window.

It's hard to see how May's government survives like this. But she has survived up until now. Maybe the Tories and the Blairites think Corbyn has been softened up sufficiently with incessant claims of anti-Semitism that he's vulnerable at the polls.