This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, February 6, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

As a March deadline for Brexit approaches, what should be the element of a post-EU deal for Great Britain?

Large internal divisions seem somewhat intractable, and no consensus has emerged on trade, foreign

policy, and other critical issues.

Cato's Ryan Bourne and Emma Ashford comment.

Well, last Tuesday was a huge day in Parliament

in terms of Brexit votes, and two key things happen.

First of all, attempts to kind of slow down Brexit by delaying the process extending the

Article 50 period of negotiations. That was defeated in Parliament by a combination of the

government combined with Brexiteers and the Democratic Union Party who back up the

Conservative government in a confidence and supply arrangement.

And I think what that indicated was that a lot of the people that want to soften Brexit or

kind of frustrate it, delay it for a given period of time are hopelessly divided themselves

about what they see as a potential alternative to the route that we've been going.

So some of them want the UK to remain within the single market. Some want a customs

union. Others want a second referendum and the option of remaining. So they were unable to kind of come

together to defeat the government and the Brexiteers on either extending

or overturning Brexit for now.

Now the vote that the government won that was the important vote was that they amended their initial motion on the withdrawal deal such that if the backstop, the motion said if the backstop was taken out of the existing withdrawal agreement,

the House of Commons has voted to say that it would pass the withdrawal deal. That was the motion that was put forward called the Brady motion.

And why is this important?

...