The BBC are reporting that Theresa May has changed her mind (yet again) and is now planning to hold a series of indicative votes in parliament on various alternatives to her own deal. When that idea was originally trailed, the purpose of it was to break the deadlock and find an alternative that actually worked, but the implication now is that May would like all the alternatives to be defeated, thus concentrating minds when the main vote on her deal takes place at the end of proceedings. In other words she’s taking a punt on psychology – she reckons MPs won’t want to look ridiculous by dismissing the only deal on the table when every other hypothetical option has been rejected anyway. I’m not entirely sure whether that’ll work, because presumably opposition MPs will receive their instructions from the whips about how to vote on the deal before the indicative votes take place. It’s a lot easier to cope with looking faintly ridiculous if you’re simply adhering to party discipline.
Whether any of the alternatives to the deal have a chance of passing depends essentially on two questions – a) will a second referendum be one of the options?, and b) if so, will Labour back it? On a strict reading of Labour’s policy as agreed at conference, they shouldn’t vote for a referendum at that stage because they wouldn’t have yet tried to force a general election, which is supposed to be Step 1. But presumably Corbyn will come under pressure to bend the policy if Labour pro-Europeans feel that they’ve arrived at the only realistic time at which a “People’s Vote” could be secured. He might try to square the circle by giving his MPs a free vote – which would almost certainly lead to the proposal being defeated. Even if he can bring himself to whip his MPs to vote in favour, though, the arithmetic would be tight.
Other than a second referendum, I can’t see any of the alternatives to the May deal having a chance of attracting a majority. The Norway Plus idea would certainly be doomed to defeat, because it entails the retention of free movement, which both the Tory and Labour leaderships agree (wrongly, in my view) is inconsistent with the Leave vote in 2016.
