Brexit: Another intense week for the government - will the PM survive?

In what is set to be the most difficult week since last week, the government may approach several ‘crunch time’ moments.

The first is the potential for the Brexit agreement to come to fruition. Today at 1530, Theresa May will again update Parliament about Brexit progress and is to say that the Brexit deal is 95% agreed. Nonetheless, the 5% is still to do with the Northern Irish backstop – the disagreement about maintaining trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland with or without a border.

This issue has created deadlock, with the EU saying that any continued trade with the UK that is outside the customs union or the single market necessitates border checks. The UK argues that this is in violation of the Good Friday Agreement, which played a large role in ending the troubles and allowed Northern Irish and Republic of Irish people to move freely between countries and claim both British and Irish citizenships. With border checks, a line of division will be once again created that threatens the political agreement made to stop the fighting in Northern Ireland.

This is a particularly difficult issue to sort out. Legal rules around how two communities trade together have clashed with political agreements about how two groups live together. Nonetheless, both the EU and the UK say ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’, meaning they will have to sort this out to reach an agreement.

If it is made known that a deal is done bar the signatures at the bottom of the page, the contents will certainly be discussed in a finite manner. There has been much posturing about what MPs will or won’t do in light of a particular deal, and any news of an agreement will force them to lay their cards on the table. At present, it is doubtful that the government could pass their agreement through parliament. It is even doubtful that the cabinet will support the agreement in full. Resignations are anticipated. However, whether MPs will stick to their threats when the alternative possibilities are no-deal, a general election, a referendum or a new vote may force them to bite the bullet and go with the Prime Minister. Nonetheless, this situation will make or break the success of the Brexit deal.

Related to this is the debate around whether the Conservative party will let Theresa May last the week as their leader. Once more, murmurings about leadership challenges are circulating. Many say that if they are to oust the prime minister, they need to do it in haste. To launch this challenge, a cohort of 48 conservative MPs needs to submit a letter of no confidence. Some claim that this number is reached and that the group need only submit their letters to the chairman of the 1922 committee (the group made up of Conservative party backbenchers), yet they are biding their time for the opportune moment. Will this week be it?

Well, all none of these things could feasibly happen. The only thing that is remotely clear is that these are extraordinary times of political upheaval and that the consequences of each path are considerable.

The DMA has lobbied on Brexit extensively and issued comment in the media and beyond. Click to view our position papers on no-deal, Canada+ and Chequers.