- We are NOT devo! - 7th August 2020
- Left hand drive - 3rd July 2020
- Incoming - 13th June 2020
This week our political columnist The Rebel gives you the insider’s view of what is happening in Westminster as an extraordinary constitutional crisis looms over Brexit.
The Rebel is a leading political figure close to senior politicians in Westminster as well as Cardiff Bay, and will always give readers the inside track on what is being discussed in the corridors of power.
Everyone says they are amazed she is still there.
After all Theresa May lost her last Brexit ‘deal’ by a massive 230 votes – the largest defeat for a sitting Government in history, and there was then a vote of no-confidence in her.
Her own MPs lined up to slag her off.
Yet she is still there – and MPs as well as their advisers think that her greatest strength is also her greatest weakness.
Stubbornness.
Theresa is now readying a last-gasp push to get her deal through the Commons if MPs vote to seize control of the Brexit timetable next week.
She knows she is powerless to prevent legislation removing the immediate threat of a no-deal exit proposed by Yvette Cooper of Labour.
Downing Street has identified a week between MPs backing the measure in principle on Tuesday and the legislation being introduced on February 5 and intends to confront Brexiteers with a choice between voting for her deal or facing an all-but certain delay.
So Theresa could have a few days to save herself.
One of her MPs told me: “I’ve never seen a time like it.
“All the options are open, a delay, making no-deal illegal or even a no-deal itself, although that seems pretty unlikely.
“Everyone is worried – and the thought of a General Election and Corbyn getting in is putting the fear of God in us!”
And Theresa is relying on that – that her MPs are more frightened of Jeremy than of voting down another deal.
There is real hatred of Jacob Rees-Mogg, too, and his hardline European Research Group for proposing that the Queen should suspend Parliament to stop this Cooper amendment making a no-deal illegal.
He is now talking about “vestigial constitutional means”, but his critics say it is the first step to having tanks on the lawn.
The thinking is that Theresa will go back to Brussels and get more changes, to get it through Parliament – especially to this hated ‘backstop’.
But, honestly, nobody really knows what is going to happen.
They are calling her ‘Teflon Theresa’.
Nothing seems to stick to her!
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