Brexit is like a TV series that goes on and on with increasingly improbable plotlines

Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn - Image credit: John Stillwell/PA Wire/PA Images

If Brexit was a TV series, surely we would be on season 15 by now, or at least it feels that way.

And like a TV show that’s gone on way too long, we’ve reached the point where the writers seem to have run out of ideas and are recycling the same old scenarios.

Didn’t we see that speech in front of Number 10 in seasons four and eight? Haven’t we had that vote in the last series?

Meanwhile, the plot twists become ever more improbable and desperate. If British politics was fiction, we’d be saying it was a bit far-fetched.

Brexit day has come and gone. And far from being the major season finale we were all led to expect – “we will leave on the 29th of March 2019,” said Theresa May – many, many times – it has flopped, with another lame series continuing into next week, next month or infinity.

A week past Friday, the PM managed to get her Brexit deal back before MPs for a third time, despite the Speaker, John Bercow, ruling that the same motion could not be put before the House more than once.

It was a move that SNP MP Pete Wishart dubbed ‘Schrödinger’s meaningful vote’ (both alive and dead), achieved by splitting the withdrawal part from the future political relationship.

Despite the cunningness of that plan, MPs voted it down. Indeed, they were probably more likely to vote against it, out of annoyance at being forced to vote on the same thing they had already rejected twice, although the margin of the loss did decrease.

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw called it “potentially illegal trickery”, while Tory MP Julian Lewis revealed he had seen two colleagues reduced to tears by the stress of having to vote against the party whip for a third time and appealed to the Speaker for protection for MPs from such pressure.

Bercow said: “I think many people will feel it is a powerful observation there are a number of reasons for the long-established convention the House is not asked to decide the same question more than once in the same session.

“In my own view, it is a powerful reinforcement of the continuing case for the convention.”

Meaningful Vote episode three was swiftly followed by Indicative Vote episode two, where four of the more popular alternatives to the PM’s deal, proposed by cross-party groups of backbench MPs the previous week, were brought back to the Commons for a second time.

The four options were: a customs union, ‘common market 2.0’ (single market and customs union), a referendum on a final deal, and a vow to withdraw Article 50 if no deal could be reached.

Kenneth Clarke’s proposal for a permanent customs union came closest to getting MPs’ backing, losing by only three votes, while the highest number of votes in favour went to Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson’s call for a second referendum on any deal agreed, but it still fell by a margin of 12.

However, none of the options attracted more than 37 Conservative votes and following the defeat of his proposal for a new common market, Conservative MP Nick Boles made an emotional resignation from the party from the floor of the House of Commons, citing the Tories’ failure to compromise.

Afterwards, Boles told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “It’s a profoundly depressing thing when you find that the parties that you don’t belong to are more open to conversation, more open to compromise and more willing to actually follow through on commitments that they’ve made than your own.”

While Boles said that he admired the PM’s “grit and determination” and sense of duty, he said he was furious that she had “utterly, utterly not just mismanaged this whole situation, but entirely misunderstood it and entirely misunderstood what was the duty of the prime minister of this country at this time.

“You know, her duty was to find a deal that you could reconcile almost all of the population to it.”

by Kevin Schofield

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But plans for a third round of indicative votes came to an end on Wednesday after MPs were evenly split 310 each way and the Speaker cast a deciding vote against it.

A vote on a bill requiring the PM to request an extension to Article 50 beyond the current deadline of 12 April, in an attempt to prevent a no-deal Brexit, passed by just one vote.

But just how meaningful this is is doubtful, given that the only way to avoid no deal in the long term continues to be agreeing a deal.

In one last-ditch attempt to achieve this, having failed to get either the backing of her own party or MPs across the Commons, Theresa May announced that she would hold talks with Jeremy Corbyn.

Theresa May’s offer presented both a threat and an opportunity for Corbyn. On the one hand, there is the possibility that he could become the hero of the day if he can facilitate some form of acceptable deal that will get through the House, but on the other, there is a possibility that he will either become the scapegoat for the failure to reach an agreement or be seen as facilitating a Tory Brexit.

And even if they come up with a solution that is mutually acceptable, there is no guarantee that the deal they agree will get the backing of a majority of MPs, given that the indicative votes on a variety of choices have not been able to produce a majority for any single one.

Speaking after her own meeting with Theresa May, Nicola Sturgeon flagged up the risks for Corbyn.

She said: “I suppose overall, my concern is that in the rush to reach some compromise with the clock ticking, what will happen over the next few days, if anything happens over the next few days, is that a bad compromise will be reached.

“People will probably heave a sigh of relief that some agreement has been reached, but then very quickly realise that it’s not in the interests of the UK, it will satisfy no one and of course will be open to being unpicked by a prime minister that is not Theresa May, perhaps somebody like Boris Johnson, so I think there’s a need to be wary.

“If I was in Jeremy Corbyn’s shoes right now, I would be very wary about signing up to anything that may not be able to be delivered, in fact, may not be enough in the first place.”

And while some in the EU welcomed May’s decision to confer with Corbyn – Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier tweeted “better late than never” – there is no certainty that the EU will agree to a further extension, either until the PM’s requested date of 30 June or longer, that runs into and disrupts the European Parliament elections from 23 to 26 May.

In the European Parliament, its chief Brexit representative, Guy Verhofstadt, warned: “I know that a number of colleagues are thinking, ‘Ah, maybe a long extension, long extension’.

“Don’t have any illusion. The fact that we should create a situation where Britain is with one foot inside the union and with one foot outside the union is a tragedy, is bad for the European Union.

“Can you imagine a little bit that the new prime minister of Great Britain, Mr Johnson or Mr Gove, both the architects of the Brexit disaster, would have the keys in their hands of the future of the European Union?

“I cannot think about it, that that will happen. It will be a disaster for the European Union. And it’s not the way that we can go forward.”

But where does this leave us? In much the same place, with no deal highly likely, whether next week, next month or later this year.

But of course, there is still time for a further plot twist in this series of unfortunate events, whether it is a second referendum, an election or a Brexit deal.

Let’s hope someone is able to write a conclusion to this never-ending saga before it descends even further into farce.