Indecisions, indecisions

Yup, it’s another Brexit entry.

On Monday, Westminster had another Brexit vote.  This one was a neutral motion.  Which means it has no actual impact except to say “This has happened”.

This, however, does not prevent these motions from being amendable.  And this one was.  It was amended to allow the Commons to take control of proceedings for a series of indicative votes for what should happen Brexit wise.  This is extraordinary.  The normal process is that the Government sets the business for each day in the Commons.  As you can imagine, this did not go down well at all.

Today was the day in question.  There were eight options up for the vote.  These ranged from immediate No Deal to Revoke.  The vote was done on paper, each one was a straight yes/no vote.  The voting took place between 7 and 7:30 and the results were announced just before 10pm.

Every single one lost.  Out of the eight options, all went Nay.

So, that did a superb job at clearing this shit up.  (~I’m deliberately ignoring the fact this should have been done 2 years ago at the start of the process, or even before we invoked Article 50, simply because that way lies me setting up a bottle of Scotch as an IV.)

The two options that got the most Yay votes are a) whatever is decided goes to a public vote and b) a customs union.

So, there’s going to be more indicative votes on Monday.  April 1st.  No, that is not an April Fools prank.  Nor is it a joke that we don’t know what is going to happen.

Nor is it an April Fools that it’s also the day when the Revoke A50 petition is going to be debated (currently sitting at just under 6 million votes).

However, the EU Withdrawal Act has been amended to reflect the extension(s) we got from the EU.  This hasn’t pleased some, because they thought that while the EUWA stated we’d be leaving on Friday, that would still be the case (it wasn’t).

Also, Theresa May told Tory MP’s that is the Withdrawal Agreement passed, she’d stand down as leader of the Tory party and Prime Minister.  This is in an attempt to get Tories to vote for it.  First thing to note is that it’s kinda fucked up that she’s blackmailing them with her leaving.  The second thing to note is that it won’t work.  For one, the DUP absolutely will not vote for the WA while the backstop is part of it and the EU will not remove that.  Secondly, the Speaker made it quite clear again today that unless there is a substantive change to the WA and May stepping down is most certainly that.

So, now we wait til Monday.  Possibly.

Will