Welcome to the Guardian’s weekly Brexit briefing. If you’d like to receive this as a weekly email, sign up here. You can also catch our latest Brexit Means … podcast here, and for daily updates, head to Andrew Sparrow’s politics live blog.
Top stories
If it is difficult to keep up, that’s because it has been yet another extraordinary week.
It started with the “tunnel” negotiations triggered on the back of Leo Varadkar and Boris Johnson’s talks in Wirral the week before. It ended with the anticlimactic “super Saturday” as MPs voted 322 to 306 to force the prime minister to ask for the Brexit extension he vowed never to request.
In between we had the dual drama of the Democratic Unionist party being abandoned by Johnson and the surprise announcement that he had sealed a deal in Brussels just four hours after the Northern Ireland party announced it could not support his agreement.
The DUP felt duped after details of the deal confirmed the backstop had been replaced with something they considered even more unpalatable.
Under the deal Northern Ireland would remain in the UK customs territory but follow EU rules, in addition to following the EU rules on goods, something the DUP had already acceded to. The regime would automatically kick into place until 2025 if no free trade agreement was signed off by December 2020, the end of the transition period. The local devolved government would have to consent to keeping the regime for longer.
The DUP was furious, but felt the pressure back home as rival groups accused the party of a catastrophic misstep.
But that wasn’t all. On closer inspection it transpired that the Brexit deal also included some significant changes to the political declaration, in addition to the legally binding withdrawal agreement that contained the Northern Ireland protocol.
Unions called it a licence to tear up workers’ rights.
The deal was then struck at the EU summit on Thursday, resulting in another 48 hours of frantic business for Downing Street.
To get the deal through parliament in Saturday’s special sitting, Johnson needed not just the 21 MPs he had excluded from the party, but the 28 “Spartans” in the Eurosceptic European Research Group (ERG), who had consistently voted against May’s deal, and also some rebel Labour MPs.
It looked like he had enough votes, with hardline ERG members Steve Baker and Mark Francois declaring support after being reassured that the UK would indeed default to World Trade Organization rules on 1 January 2021 if there was no free trade deal by the end of the transition period.
However, in the end the Conservative Oliver Letwin won support for his amendment, obliging Johnson to get approval for the legislation needed to make Brexit law before any meaningful vote.
The Benn act then forced Johnson to seek an extension of article 50, which he did but without signing the letter. He also sent another letter to the EU arguing against it.
What next?
It is another critical week.
On Tuesday night Johnson faces yet another knife-edge vote after he was forced to release the Brexit legislation bill called for in the Letwin amendment.
The prime minister is now pushing to get the bill through in three days – a task that is nigh on impossible – if he is to prevent his “do or die” Brexit on 31 October being thwarted.
It took 25 days for the Lisbon treaty to be passed and 11 months for the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2o18 to get through.
Johnson’s team are arguing that much of the legislation has been teased out by parliament already in the 500 hours or so of Brexit debates in the past year.
Here is a first-glance summary of what is in the Brexit legislation.
On Tuesday MPs face two votes – one on the second reading of the withdrawal agreement bill (WAB) at 7pm, then another immediately after, the programme motion. This promises to be a major flashpoint, as it will deliver or crash the government’s dramatically accelerated timetable.
If Johnson gets his way he will be on course for a Brexit on 31 October, albeit with a likely short extension, now being considered by EU leaders.
If he fails, he could abandon the bill altogether and try to engineer a vote on a general election.
Either way it is likely that an extension to article 50 will be granted. The French are against it, but Germany is keeping the door open.
What else?
Hundreds of thousands, some say 1 million, marched in London on Saturday in favour of a second referendum.
The best of the rest
It’s not done by a long way – on the ground with the People’s Vote protesters.
Savid Javid refuses to assess the economic impact of the Brexit plan.
What Johnson’s deal means for workers’ rights, the NHS and the economy.
Meaningless Monday plays into PM’s “people versus parliament” narrative for general election.
Michael Gove triggers no-deal contingency plans.
Labour could back the Johnson bill if a referendum is attached says Keir Starmer.
People’s Vote split by power struggle at critical time for alliance.
Irish border checks risk creating a depressing, jobless region.
Top comment
The campaign to stop Brexit has never found the right words or the argument to dent the leave campaign and shift public opinion, says the columnist and author Andy Beckett in the Guardian.
The same has happened with who voted for Brexit. Again and again, they have been characterised as “the left behind”: poor, neglected, Labour-inclined voters from the north of England. The reality that Brexit is essentially a rightwing project – to deregulate the British economy for the benefit of more hard-nosed, non-EU capitalism – has been largely obscured.
Since 2016, a few dissenting academics, most prominently the Oxford University geographer Danny Dorling, have produced strong evidence that more Brexit voters were, in fact, prosperous Conservatives from southern England. But these interventions have hardly dented the conventional wisdom.
Top tweet
Jean-Claude Juncker probably speaks for many when he declares Brexit has been a waste of time and energy for the European commission.
Jean-Claude Juncker: Brexit has been "a waste of time and energy" for his European commission.
— Jennifer Rankin (@JenniferMerode) October 22, 2019
He will always regret UK decision to leave, adding that his commission can say "we did everything we could" to ensure orderly withdrawal.
