Since yesterday afternoon,Monday 18th March, an additional situation has emerged to block any possibility of leaving the political machinations of the EU on March 29th, and it was once again put forward by John Bercow, this time enforcing Parliamentary precedent going back to 1604 stating that the same content cannot be voted on more than once in the same session, but Teresa May’s deal has already been voted on twice and it is for the third attempt that is being blocked for the reasons to be explained.
The problem of being able to leave by the 29th has the convolution of twists and turns on all sides together with the abrupt change of motivations also revealed by Jacob Rees- Mogg yesterday morning on LBC Radio.
The simplest and most clear cut way of exiting from the European Union was always by leaving on WTO article 24 rules but this route had gone through various stages of being blocked by parliament, and finally given the added caveat of ” Under all circumstances”. This left the only option of accepting Teresa May’s totally unsavoury entrapment deal or to face an extension which would also cost us very dearly, and so the one hope was that a single ally within the 27 member states might block the proposed extension, to use the EU’s own rules to block the possibility of an extension so that we leave on time under the law set out by article 50. However it has been stated that this would unlikely be a possibility because member states have their own needs for negotiations and so would not wish to sour the relationship with other EU member States towards themselves.
So yesterday it was revealed that the ERG toyed with the possibility of accepting May’s unsavoury deal in order to secure the legal status of having left the EU, otherwise it was feared that any delay or revocation of Article 50 could possibly result in not leaving EU at all, especially if it was eventually be deemed to be a better choice to remain in order to keep what we already have as the opportunity to depart would never be given again.
It is strongly suspected that John Bercow himself is a remainer but in his position of House Speaker he is required to take a position of impartiality. However we have witnessed that he is willing to take a position which breaks with tradition and alter previous precedents, as it suits, and will explain this away as being one of introducing progress, but could be regarded by observers as pandering to his personal designs. So now it seems that the precedent of 1604 suits the purpose of blocking an actual legal leave outcome, no matter how distasteful the intention may be, but it appears to be just upholding a lawful precedent.
So presently, the current convolutional change on both leave and remain, is firstly that the Leave MP’s who had previously rejected May’s deal twice have changed there mind and decided to go with it in order to secure a legal Brexit leave outcome. Remain MP’s who had also previously voted against May’s deal did also because it is recognised as a bad deal but additionally their motive was to seek a so called people’s vote on something that had never been delivered, in the hope that it would at best stop Brexit or result in a call for a General Election in which case if Labour won they would overturn the result of the Referendum.
So it now looks like it was John Bercow who single handedly held the power to stall the intentions of the leave diehards who now wished to accept the deal in order to establish the status of having legally departed from the EU no matter how distasteful and hazardous the potential outcome may be.
The tactic of using the banning of previously rejected votes which was introduced back in 1604 was conveyed by others previously and as John Bercow likes to demonstrate and show boat his astuteness of mind during Parliamentary sessions, then it can quite confidently be accepted that he fully understood the result of upholding this long-standing principle.
It had previously been a complete stalemate with nowhere else to go through the rejection of May’s so called deal together with the blocking of leaving under WTO Article 24 rules by the amendment in Parliament to ban leaving on what Remainers chose to coin ”No Deal” under all circumstances.
John Redwood has always pointed out that by leaving on a free trade agreement under WTO rules would enable the UK to continue trading without the imposition of trade tariffs on each other for two years and even ten if needed in order to continue trading normally while future trading arrangements are being negotiated.
RGH
