On the Record | Brexit Retreat Opens Door for BoJo

Please see my latest wire as Brexit diarist for The New York Sun, ‘Brexit Retreat Opens Door for BoJo’:

Prime Minister Theresa May’s retreat on Brexit is best seen as an opening for her former foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, who is the last contender for prime minister to have seen the European Union question clearly from the start. What Mrs. May is doing, after all, is what Mr. Johnson proposed, once it became so clear to so many that she had been snookered in Brussels.

What Mrs. May did in the Commons this afternoon was to announce that she was postponing Tuesday’s vote on the Government’s Withdrawal Agreement bill with the European Union. “While there is broad support for many of the key aspects of the deal,” Mrs. May confessed, “there remains widespread and deep concern.”

The Prime Minister made it clear she comprehends that had she proceeded, “the deal would be rejected by a significant margin.” In the context, it is a breath-taking admission by a leader who’d seemed almost willfully blind on the point. Now, she said, the Government “will therefore defer the vote scheduled for tomorrow and not proceed to divide the House at this time.”

It is easy to see why Mrs. May is vote-shy. Just last week, after all, the government lost three votes. Two were in relation to the legal advice the government had received on the agreement. Parliament had asked for the advice in November but, when only a summary was provided, the Commons demanded the full report.

Mrs. May lost one vote to postpone this vote, then lost the vote itself — a vote that many say was signaling that the Government was in contempt of Parliament.

The third vote is even more momentous. The Commons won a vote to set out its own Brexit “Plan B” if the Government cannot get its plan through Parliament. This could be another Withdrawal Agreement or another referendum vote — even to shelve Brexit unilaterally, as the European Court of Justice announced today in answer to a query from the Scottish legislature and for hopeful Remainers.

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My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun.