Brexit

History will remember Sir James Dyson as the pioneer of the bagless vacuum-cleaner. Thanks to his genius, we are now able to interrupt our chores and stare in amazement at mini-tornados of dust and filth swirling around in a transparent cylinder. This void of rubbish has been exported all over the world – not unlike our parliamentary system. But its knighted creator made an error this week when he announced that Singapore is to be the new home of his world HQ. This looks like an endorsement of the EU which has just struck a trade-deal with Singapore. The Bagless Wonder is supposed be a Brexiteer. Tory backbencher James Gray leapt to his defence. The suavely-dressed and sad-voiced MP reminded the house that Sir James has splurged cash all over the place.

When Eurosceptic MPs voted down Theresa May's Brexit deal last week, the hope was that this would send a strong signal both to the Prime Minister and Brussels that strong changes were needed if it were to have any hope of passing. The problem is that the scale of the defeat – by 230 votes – means that the changes Leave MPs want to see are not the changes that the EU has in mind. In an interview with the Luxembourg Times, chief negotiator Michel Barnier says that he does not believe the troubled backstop is 'the central issue'.

Britain moved a step close to Weimar yesterday when the Prime Minister used the threat of terrorism to get her way. Being a conservative woman of the upper-middle class, Theresa May did not precisely mimic the cries of ‘there will be blood’ that come from the right’s more deranged corners. You don’t talk like that if you want to get on in Thames Valley society. Rather the Prime Minister issued her warning in the careful language of a bureaucrat. ‘There has not yet been enough recognition of the way that a second referendum could damage social cohesion by undermining faith in our democracy,’ she said. You would have missed her intent behind this seemingly bland statement unless you had been paying attention to the noise that surrounds her.

Cabinet today was not as dramatic as some had expected. No one argued for ministers being allowed a free vote on the Cooper / Boles amendment. Indeed, I’m told the Chief Whip’s plea for ministers to stick to collective responsibility went unchallenged. Perhaps, the two most interesting contributions came from Jeremy Hunt and David Gauke. Gauke questioned the government’s new approach. He said he was worried that even if the government did get something on the backstop, there still wouldn’t be enough Tory MPs backing the deal for it to pass. While Hunt argued that the best thing for the government to do was to get parliamentary support for a plan on time-limiting the backstop.

The Prime Minister’s plans B, C , D and E are all the same: run the clock as close as possible to 29 March, Brexit Day, so that enough of the critics to her Brexit plan blink at the risk of either crashing out with no deal or seeing Brexit cancelled such that it passes at the last. In two words, the Brexit strategy is 'Tick Tock'. Yesterday’s conference-call cabinet meeting was a masterclass in Theresa May as bulldozer and ministers 'sitting back', according to one of them.

Are we suffering a national humiliation? There has been a lot of commentary – not least from elements of the Remain-supporting press – about how the UK has become an international laughing stock. Papers in other countries have joined in the chuckling. Recent events have not been good for our reputation for stability and sanity. However, the one thing that the UK could do to destroy what international credibility it has left, is to change its mind on Brexit, and go back to the EU asking whether we can stay after all. Our national humiliation would be complete. We would be the employee who stormed out publicly, insisting to everyone that they could make it on their own, only to beg their employer to take them back.

A few of us on the Labour left decide to see if it is possible to conjure, from nowhere, a #FinalSay campaign for a second referendum. The Labour front bench does not sound ecstatic about a second referendum, and Chuka Umunna’s lot are bound to screw it up if they’re in charge. So we schedule a meeting in the Commons, commission a meme and spread the word. Not long after this goes public, numerous Twitter users with random numbers in their handles begin accusing me of being a ‘pro-Nato White Helmet shill’, a ‘coup-monger’ and a ‘neoliberal’. The reaction at my Labour branch is more positive. We pass a motion calling for an emergency party conference to decide the line in any second referendum. Our MP, pro-Brexiteer Kate Hoey, does not attend.

Now that the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement has been decisively rejected by Parliament, the challenge, as Theresa May said last night, is to find an alternative way forward. But the reality is that the fall of the agreement is less important for the UK than widely assumed. It did not pin down any long-term trade arrangements. Even in the short term, the main gain to the UK was a transition period which now looks less essential than was the case when it was first mooted over a year ago. It is true that there is now a possibility of tariffs from March 30th but these tariffs are mostly small and the EU has stronger reasons for avoiding them than the UK. The EU exports £54.