Not Over Yet
TALKING POLITICS
Catherine Carr
4.7 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 23 October 2019
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After two significant votes in the House of Commons pointing in two different directions - one towards a Brexit agreement and the other towards a general election - we discuss where we might be heading. Does Johnson have enough to persuade the wavering MPs he needs to get his Brexit deal over the line? Do his opponents have enough to stop him? Can European leaders still force the issue? And if there is an election, does it all change again? Plus we ask: what's actually in the WAB? With Helen Thompson, Catherine Barnard and Chris Brooke.
Talking Points:
Last night was the first time since the Brady amendment that Parliament voted positively on something.
- The stop Brexit MP’s seem to be implementing tactics without a strategy.
- Are there any conditions under which the 14 Labour MPs would vote for Johnson’s deal for real?
- The Labour whipping operation is still working. So it seems unlikely that a WA will go through this House of Commons.
Johnson’s deal is mostly Theresa May’s deal, with the exception of some really complicated legal points around Northern Island.
- Until people are given an either/or choice, they’ll probably keep dancing around.
Where is the EU on all of this?
- They are unlikely to renegotiate another deal.
- Macron could still force a choice between no deal and revoke, but he doesn’t want to be blamed for the UK crashing out.
At some point, an election is going to become inevitable.
- Can anything pass without an election?
- Things have changed for Johnson: now he’d be campaigning with a deal.
- Christmas could put a wrench in things: would a winter election be bad for Labour?
How effective was a Benn act?
- Perhaps more so than people originally thought.
- A shorter extension could reveal the weaknesses in the Benn act. But Macron probably won’t force the issue.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Further Learning:
And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello my name is David Ronserman and this is Talking Politics. For once on Wednesday morning |
| 0:10.8 | we can talk about the big things that happen on Tuesday night. There were two votes, they |
| 0:15.3 | pointed in different directions. We're going to try and work out which way Brexit is heading |
| 0:19.6 | now. |
| 0:25.8 | Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books which is celebrating |
| 0:30.6 | its 40th anniversary for the next few months with an unimprovable offer. Get a year's subscription |
| 0:37.1 | and a limited edition LRB tote bag for just £40 by using the URL lrb.me forward slash |
| 0:46.2 | birthday. |
| 0:52.9 | So I'm delighted that we've got a full house of expertise to try and work this one out. |
| 0:57.0 | We have Catherine Bernard, expert on EU law, Chris Brook, expert on political theory and |
| 1:02.3 | some of the inner workings of the UK electoral system, Helen Thompson, expert on political |
| 1:06.8 | economy and much else besides. Normally I'm saying this to Catherine because when we've |
| 1:12.1 | done this in the past we've started with the law and worked our way to the politics. Today |
| 1:17.1 | we're going to start with the politics and work our way to the law because last night was |
| 1:21.1 | pretty raw politics. In a way I think we can start with a fairly blunt question. There |
| 1:26.8 | were two votes. One vote was won by the government, one vote was lost by the government. The vote |
| 1:31.6 | that was won was on the second reading with Dural Agreement Bill and it was won by 30 votes |
| 1:36.8 | relatively comfortably. The one that was lost was on the timetable link. We will not now |
| 1:41.4 | leave on the 31st of October. I'm not getting a look but I think we probably won't. So the |
| 1:49.8 | first question in a way is as we look forward which of these is the more significant vote. |
| 1:54.3 | Do you have a sense, maybe we'll start with Helen, do you have a sense of which one of |
| 1:58.5 | these in the long run will be seen to have mattered more? I think the obvious answer is that |
... |
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