Parliament is set for another historic day in the UK’s long-running Brexit saga.
On Monday night, a proposal by senior Tory backbencher Oliver Letwin to take control of the Commons’ business and hold indicative votes on Brexit won the support of a majority of MPs.
This will take place later today, but how will the process work and what’s the likely outcome?
What is the process?
After a three- or four-hour debate today, MPs will head to a voting lobby at 7pm to collect ballot papers containing a number of Brexit options selected by Speaker John Bercow.
They will have 30 minutes to vote, in private, supporting as many of the options as they like. The results will be announced some time after 9pm with each MP’s voting choices made public on the parliamentary website later this evening.
Ahead of that, however, there will also be a debate on whether tonight’s votes, as well as the next set scheduled for Monday night, should even go ahead.
Brexiteer MPs have put forward a series of amendments to the business motion, which sets out the process for tonight’s votes. “In theory, the 27-strong majority which voted in favour of this whole process Monday night should hold today, meaning these amendments should all be defeated,” says Politico.
Which Brexit options will be voted on?
16 options have been put forward by MPs, containing all manner of different Brexit permutations.
It will then be up to the Speaker to pick which ones MPs will vote on, with reports suggesting that he will choose between six and ten.
The Government has chosen not to include May’s Brexit deal as one of the options, with reports suggesting a third meaningful vote will be held later this week.
The “not-so-secret hope of many in government is that they might help the withdrawal agreement get over the line”, says The Spectator’s James Forsyth, either by showing a majority in the Commons for a softer Brexit and forcing hardline Brexiteers into line or by showing no majority support for any option, leaving May’s deal (with 242 votes at the last time of asking) as the best way forward.
What will the outcome be?
None of the options is expected to garner the majority of MPs’ support this time around, but the most popular options will be put through to an as-yet-not-worked-out knockout vote on Monday.
With the Tories hopelessly divided, “the most popular options tonight are likely to be those that secure Labour’s frontbench support”, says Politico.
Reports suggest Jeremy Corbyn will be whipping his MPs in favour of a number of outcomes. The amendments supporting Norway-plus and a confirmatory public vote are thought to be among them.
The Conservatives’ whipping position is less clear, “on the one hand the Government, in particular, will not want ministers voting against official policy but on the other, that could lead to further resignations”, says The Times.
The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg believes as many as 19 ministers are ready to resign if May refuses to allow a free vote, but The Sun goes higher, naming Skills Minister Anne Milton and Home Office Minister Victoria Atkins as having led a delegation of 30 government ministers to Downing Street demanding a free vote.
Will the Government have to act on the outcome?
The Government will not be bound by any of the votes today, but Remainer MP ringleader Nick Boles told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that Parliament could eventually force ministers to implement the outcome.
“We will be relying on the government to reflect Parliament’s wishes,” he said. “If ultimately the Government refuses to listen to what Parliament has voted for then we will look to bring forward a bill – pass an Act of Parliament that will require the Government to reflect Parliament’s wishes in its new negotiating mandate.”
But according to ITV’s Robert Peston, Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox have already “informed Cabinet that if at the end of the Letwin process MPs pass a motion mandating the PM to pursue a new route through the Brexit mess the PM and Government would be in breach of the ministerial code and the law if they fail to follow MPs’ instructions”.
This means that “the impression created by the PM that she could ignore the results of the indicative votes process is not true – or so ministers who attended Cabinet tell me”, he says.
