200 MPs meet Mrs May to oppose No Deal

Prime Minister Theresa May will tell 200 MPs opposed to No DEal to vote for Her Deal.

Prime Minister Theresa May will tell 200 MPs opposed to No DEal to vote for Her Deal.

A group of over 200 MPs opposed to the United Kingdom leaving the European Union without a deal are to meet the Prime Minister today.

Sky news reports: ‘The politicians are from the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, SNP and Plaid Cymru parties and the letter was written by Meriden MP Caroline Spelman (Conservative) and Birmingham Erdington MP Jack Dromey (Labour).’

How it will go

This is what will happen at the meeting:

Mrs May will make sure everyone has a drink of some sort. That is what she did yesterday, says The Sun, when she entertained Conservative and DUP MPs including Boris Johnson and Nigel Dodds, as stage one of her charm offensive. Not that any changed their minds, but hey, one does what one can. Then after a warm welcome, the Prime Minister will ask the 200 MPs about their concerns.

They will say manufacturing in the UK, especially in the Midlands, will grind to a halt if there is no deal. Thousands of their constituents will lose their jobs. There will be no exports to the EU any more, and no drugs or nurses for the NHS. It will be like jumping off a cliff-edge. Or being involved in a car-crash. Aircraft will fall out of the sky, some may assert. Others will report the Chicken Licken Think Tank has said the sky itself will fall down.

Mrs May will immediately express herself extremely sympathetic to the MPs. She will say she understands their concerns. The Prime Minister will add she fully shares their horror of leaving the EU without a deal. It really must not happen, despite Government planning for it just in case. ‘No Deal’ would be unthinkable, she will say, nodding her head earnestly.

What deal do the 200 MPs prefer?

That is why, she will continue brightly, the assembled MPs must vote for her deal. The only way to safeguard against No Deal is May Deal, she will tell them. A vote against May Deal would be ‘uncharted territory’ at best.

At that moment, many of the 200 MPs will say they oppose May Deal. ‘Oh I see’, the Prime Minister will respond, appearing shocked, ‘Then what deal do you prefer?’ At this, some will say they would like a Canada Deal, others will propose a Norway Deal. Some will say ‘the People’ should decide in a #PeoplesVote. Still others will venture that actually, to be honest, they want the UK to Remain in the EU.

‘Oh dear,’ Mrs May will say, ‘But if you cannot even agree amongst yourselves what deal you prefer, and some of you even want the ‘no deal’ of remaining, and you all know there is no time for a second referendum even if were democratic to hold one which it isn’t, then No Deal is the only outcome left standing.

It has to be May Deal

‘But we don’t want No Deal’, they will wail. ‘Our constituents’ jobs, no more exports, drugs, nurses, aeroplanes and cars crash, sky falls down, etc.’

‘That is why’, Mrs May will repeat, ‘You must all vote for my deal. It’s the only way to prevent No Deal.’

After more drinks and more exchanges, the 200 MPs will leave. They will leave reflecting on a lesson learned. It would have been much more clever to hold a series of indicative votes among themselves before they went in so they could present Mrs May with one collective preferred option. But it’s too late now. In fact, it really is too late now.

As for Mrs May, she will sit down and plan for episode three of her charm offensive. That is tomorrow’s invitation to yet more Conservative MPs for drinks and a promotional chat for May Deal. This time, of course, because so many will be in favour of No Deal, she will probably major on ‘No Brexit at all’ as the alternative to May Deal.  But that would mean Mrs May delaying Article 50 or pulling it altogether.  They all know she won’t do either.  But it was a free drink at No 10.  And that can’t be bad.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay denying there have been meetings between UK and EU officials on extending Article 50.

Spiritual significance

For the spiritual significance of coming out of the EU, see this link here on our website. And keep praying!

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20 comments

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  1. Well said Stephen I have followed all your comments and those of David Hathaway for some years on this subject. There has been so little reported in the press of the spiritual reason for leaving the EU and my preference is that it should be with a ‘clean set of heals’, time to shake off the sand !
    Last Sunday I stood outside the EU Parliament building in Strasbourg praying that the Lord’s will be done there, as it is in Heaven. Maybe that building will suffer the same fate as the tower of Babel it is supposed to be modelled on? I am sure all the local residential neighbours would be glad to see it go, at the very least !
    God Bless you in your continued service.
    Anton

    1. Thanks, Anton

  2. The EU would delay the 29th March date if another referendum was being planned. Or if there was a change of prime minister. a general election, etc.

    People do change their minds over the years, especially if the circumstances and their knowledge of the circumstances change. I don’t see why having another referendum at this stage should be any less democratic than having another election. We don’t feel ourselves forever bound by the results of the 1945 general election and the resulting nationalisations, do we ?

    The Conservatives chose Theresa May as their leader, and then had a vote of confidence in her (which she might have lost). Nobody suggested that this was undemocratic because it might have meant changing their mind after their original decision.

    1. There is no majority for a second referendum in the House of Commons. Even if there were, it takes so long to organise, we should have to hold EuroParl elections on 23rd May. And what would be the outcome of the referendum? Suppose it was for Canada+? If the 27 do not agree to that, what then? No, the 27 are unlikely to agree to an extension on such a nebulous basis.

      1. But there is no majority in the House of Commons for no deal or for the deal either. Holding European elections is not the end of the world by any means. We could do that again. Supposing the outcome of the referendum was for staying in the EU, Brexit having proved to be such a disaster so far, it is knowledgeably said that all the 27 would want us to stay in. Anyway, in practice it is not 27. Estonia or Cyprus is not going to hold out against the big players on this, and France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany are the most concerned about it.

        If the majority is still for leaving (there could only be two alternatives, or the referendum would not work), then we would be back to square one having had more time to think about it and stockpile vital medicines, build lorry parks in Kent, and find actual ferries for the emergency ferry companies, etc.

        Actually, it is possible to have a clever transferable vote referendum to avoid splitting the vote and not getting what most people want at all. French presidential elections are done like this (more or less).

        1. If Brexit had proved to be a disaster so far, I guess your points could begin to have some small merit.
          How can there be ‘only two alternatives’ in a referendum on Brexit? And if only two, Which two? There’s No Deal, Canada, May Deal and Norway, Remain to coin just the big four. Remain would not be on the paper since we already voted to leave. It’s just how to do it now.

            • Rocks
            • Rox G on 12 January 2019 at 01:02

            If you have more than two alternatives, that puts the country in the same position as Parliament, and would solve nothing. You would get people voting against Mrs May’s deal for different reasons, so that in the end that would register simply as NO, which would end in an abrupt “no deal” exit, which is unsatisfactory (as almost everybody at all qualified to judge agrees),

            Obviously the electorate as a whole is not at all qualified to choose between Canada, Norway, etc, and again it would not work if there were more than two options. There are referenda very frequently in Switzerland — do you know of one where there were more than two options? And these are very technical matters. Whether to stay in or leave was very much an emotional decision, and this was played on by the campaigners.

            The point of a second referendum now is to check if people still fancy leaving at all, given what they know now about the process which they didn’t know before. Last time they were presented with the dream of huge extra funding available for the NHS as against invasions by hordes of Turks — all false. We have since been told how clever marketing experts simply ascertained what people would most want and most feared, and this was offered to them regardless of reality. Many people never believed it, and enough have by now realised their mistake to make all the difference. Or perhaps not, in which case carry on by all means.

            The Brexit process so far has proved to be a disaster in splitting the political parties and the country, exacerbated by the disinformation of the original campaign. It has affected the lives of thousands of people with a foot in more than one EU country, including not least British people living in Europe (who never got a vote !), as well as European people living here (who didn’t get a vote either, although they can vote in local elections). It has taken over the attention of politicians and the media for years, when there are far more important matters to attend to (e.g. 25% of children reportedly hungry, in THIS country, not in Africa). What industries we have left are threatened, food supplies are threatened. We have already lost European institutions which were based here (because it was NOT all in Brussels, despite popular belief), It has been a disaster, even before it happens.

        2. Some MP has recently suggested that Parliament should vote with a kind of transferable vote or French president system, whereby the least favourite options are eliminated one by one until there is a run-off between the two favourite options (possibly Norway + or Remain, but who knows ?).

            • Stephen on 17 January 2019 at 16:12
              Author

            They have to honour the result of the Referendum. Neither of those two options does that.

            • Rocks
            • Rox G on 17 January 2019 at 17:21

            The referendum was merely advisory. Nonetheless, the Government took it very seriously and devoted huge energies to considering it. Neither they nor Parliament are obliged to go through with it if it is found to be bad for the country. For many who voted to leave the EU, the whole point to was to make the Westminster parliament “sovereign”. That is not achieved by forcing them to follow an outdated decision by people who in many cases have changed their minds in the current circumstances. Any parliament has to react to things as they are at the time of its actions. It doesn’t run purely according to an old agreement or a written constitution or the Book of Leviticus or Revelation.

            • Stephen on 17 January 2019 at 17:43
              Author

            Ha ha ha.

            • Rocks
            • Rox G on 17 January 2019 at 19:38

            Because Chamberlain decided on Peace in our Time, and signed up for it, it didn’t stop the country going to war. Governments hate “U-turns”, but they do have to keep up with the situation and sometimes change their minds radically. Invariably the properly crowned and anointed monarch sees the point and signs documents to go along with this as necessary. We would be very vulnerable to the wiles of other countries otherwise.

            • Stephen on 18 January 2019 at 12:21
              Author

            There was no U-turn in the late 1930s except Britain’s move to re-arm in the space granted by the 1938 Munich Agreement. That happened when Germany’s intentions became clearer with their subsequent invasion of the east of Czechoslovakia. The UK went to war not in a U-turn but because Germany broke the Munich Agreement by invading Poland on 1st September 1939. The relevant terms of the Anglo-Polish military alliance then became operational and the UK declared war on Germany.

  3. The humour of this is not lost on me either! Free drinks at No. 10 is no bad benefit for their taste buds. However, it appears to me that the May deal is NOT good. It is a typical political compromise, which, like the Middle East peace process, will not work. To me the ‘no deal’ option is the only one which can work — eventually, there being a considerable cost economically to each of us in the UK in the early stages. We cannot avoid the pain to e receivew, eventually, the gain. Are we up for it? I wonder!

  4. Excellent article as always Stephen, blessings for the year ahead.

    1. Thanks Jonathan. You too.

  5. It seems to me quite reasonable that these 200 MPs should have the welfare of their constituents in mind. Too many Brexiteers seem not to care a fig for the welfare of the people. But I doubt if these MPs could agree with each other on an alternative to Mrs May’s deal. We are not ready for Brexit, and if there were any connection between reason and British politics, we would delay Brexit until we were ready. I think Brexit will turn out to be God’s judgement, not His blessing. A no-deal Brexit now is not something I would wish on anybody, especially in a bitterly-split nation.

  6. How vastly different to the Covenant-Keeping God of the scriptures:
    “His steadfast love endures forever” Psalm 136 – and with Him “there is no shadow of turning” James 1:17
    Praise the Lord!

  7. Here’s a bit of good news:

    The Japanese prime minister Mr Abe said: “It is the strong will of Japan to further develop this strong partnership with the UK, to invest more into your country and to enjoy further economic growth with the UK.”

    Japan has the third highest GDP in the world. America has the highest and has also said they want to increase trade and then there is China at number 2 and they have expressed similar sentiment(note their GDP growth is 6.9%). We also have Australia and Canada on board.

    So it’s our old friends coming to support us as we make this bold move. Now perhaps you might like to add together the GDPs of these countries and compare to the GDP of the EU – our GDP. You have to ask yourself, which is more important.

    You see we either lock ourselves to the EU’s rules and compromise our ability to trade with the rest of the world, or we play hard ball and we go for no agreement with the EU and the EU eventually settles with us on what it is going to charge on tariffs and the like. So we move our trade away from the EU according to the level of awkwardness we experience as a result of not permitting EU political control. The picture looks like one where the more the EU retaliates on trade restrictions due to a non-deal the more it will hurt the EU in the long run. As it is the EU’s economy is not looking too prosperous. It has a lot of backward countries to feed on the proceeds of the rich ones like France and Germany, and it is inevitable their taxes will have to rise. That in turn is going to lead to political instability and possibly riots on the streets.

    In fact in such a situation, I think the normal thing that happens is the power in charge starts to clamp down harder on civil liberties and that creates a huge amount of political unrest, and then they lose power all together. The end game happens very fast indeed. The EU might however play it safe and offer us reasonable trading terms to secure their finances, but then of course other countries thinking of leaving the EU will see one comes out relatively unscathed!

  8. Is Japan our old friend, rather than (say) France or the Netherlands ? I have known old men who certainly didn’t think so. There have been obvious blips, but to take the most obvious case, we have got on well with the Germans all my life. and did so for most of the 18th and 19th centuries too. Most of this time the Japanese were completely alien to us.

    Still, Andrew may be right, and I look forward to enjoying fresh Japanese nectarines and their other fruit and vegetables; their butter, ham and salami; their wide selection of wines and cheeses. Pity about the pollution caused by the extra transport.

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