The nagging fear among the coterie of British officials most intimately involved in Brexit at Tuesday lunchtime in Whitehall had been that none of the amendments up in front of the Commons that evening would be backed by MPs.
Some hard thinking went on throughout the day over how Theresa May could possibly persuade Brussels in such a scenario that there was a deal that parliament could support if the very same parliament showed no inclination of supporting anything.
The passing of Sir Graham Brady’s amendment, sending the prime minister back to Brussels to replace the Irish backstop with an “alternative arrangement” was, to that extent, a relief.
May had after all said the Commons would be sending a message to the EU that the Irish backstop was the problem – and that reopening the deal could save the day.
Sadly for Downing Street – in the dialogue of the deaf that passes for the Brexit negotiations – a frustratingly garbled message is being received in Brussels.
On Wednesday morning, EU officials were riffling through Hansard, the official record of parliament, to try to pin down what the prime minister was looking for, tearing their hair out at the sheer range of demands from the MPs who made up May’s majority on Tuesday evening.
In Berlin, Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters that the British government needed to provide “concrete indications” of a way forward on the Irish border question, adding: “The opening of the exit deal is not on the table.”
“Let’s wait and see how the UK government interprets yesterday’s vote,” said Poland’s minister for European affairs, Konrad Szymański. “What does ‘alternative arrangements’ mean?”
In her statement to the Commons, May said she could seek “significant” changes to the Irish backstop to avoid a hard border, including a time limit on the UK being kept in a customs union, a unilateral exit clause, or an alternative plan known as the Malthouse compromise put forward by an unlikely group of Tory MPs, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former education secretary Nicky Morgan, and a former deputy mayor of London, Kit Malthouse.
The Malthouse option is regarded as laughable in Brussels, and is unlikely to be pushed hard if at all by British negotiators. The backstop would be replaced by a free trade agreement with as-yet-unknown technology to avoid customs checks on the Irish border. It would also involve extending the transition period for an extra year until December 2021 to allow more time to agree a new trading relationship while reducing the size of the UK’s Brexit bill. It is dead in the water.
The two other options – a time limit and a unilateral exit mechanism – have the distinct advantage of not being the Malthouse compromise, EU diplomats and officials say. But they too have both been resolutely rejected by the heads of state and government in the past.
The hope in London is that as the clock runs down and the pressure in the cooker is increased, attitudes will change.
The suggestion last week by the Polish foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, that a five-year time limit could be the solution is being seen by British optimists as one such straw in an allegedly favourable wind.
The claim from the European commission’s chief spokesman that a hard border would be required in the event of a no-deal Brexit, and the subsequent insistence from the Irish government that a solution would be sought to avoid such a dangerous scenario, is seen as a further crack in the EU’s unity, although sources instead insist that it was more about Brussels trying to usher Dublin along in making its no-deal preparations.
To an extent, however, the British government is right about nerves being on edge. EU diplomats admit that there is chatter in the corridors about time limits and exit mechanisms. “Something like a five-year limit would be the magic key to solve the whole issue; one would have to look at it,” one EU diplomat said. “At the end Ireland would need to think: do we want a definite problem on 30 March or do we want a possible problem in 2025? That is a choice they have to make.”
But diplomats say it is not the member states who will need to make that call. “It depends very much on how the European commission and European council act,” the source said. “It is incredibly difficult for another member state to do these things. We saw that very well with the issue of Gibraltar and the Spanish. It is so hard for the member states to criticise their demands. When you don’t have the council or commission to rein those guys in it is very difficult. Same with Ireland. Germany is never going to do it. Tusk and Juncker have to say it. Or Martin Selmayr.”
Selmayr, Juncker’s former chef de cabinet and the commission’s current secretary general, is now centre stage, a fact that makes some in London nervous.
A German national who has had many scrapes with the British along the Brexit process, not least being accused of leaking discussions held between the prime minister and Juncker over dinner at Downing Street, Selmayr is pulling the strings now.
He recently let it be known that he could see little point in offering anything before a vote made it crystal clear what could win round parliament. That clarity remains lacking. It would appear that Downing Street is in for a distinctly uncomfortable few weeks.
