Well, there’s an interesting day. We started off with the news that the Republican Party had lost the senate seat for Alabama that it carried in 2014 with 97% of the vote. It’s lucky that the US media isn’t as obsessed with using electoral swing to predict the result of a hypothetical nationwide contest as Britain’s is. If it was, the internet would now be buried in predictions that at the next election, every public office from the local town dog-catcher on upwards will be won by Democratic Party candidates.
And we end the day in Britain with the first major legislative defeat for Theresa May and the Brexit government. Amendment 7 to the government’s EU withdrawal bill, passed in defiance of Mrs May and the Conservative whips by 309 votes to 305, is an interesting and slightly opaque piece of legislation. It calls for the Westminster Parliament to have a ‘meaningful’ vote on the Brexit deal that the government ultimately negotiates, while at the same time reserving the use of the famous ‘Henry VIII Powers’ until after Parliament gives that endorsement in that meaningful vote.
What constitutes a meaningful vote? What options will Parliament have before it at the time? When will it happen? And will David Davis or indeed the May government itself last long enough to find out? All valid questions, all without answers.
Still, it’s useful to remember that we haven’t stopped Brexit. We haven’t even begun to stop Brexit. But this does set that vote at the end of the process up to be a pivotal, era-defining moment in Parliament. Will Britain reject the government’s deal and have another great big political melt-down? Or will it endorse the government’s deal and allow the executive to rewrite the law at will in the interest of pursuing a narrow national-populist agenda? Interesting times ahead, to be sure.
