After Government defeat, the Commons will now steer May towards soft Brexit
The Commons defeat - the Government's first on Brexit legislation - provides a Parliamentary handbrake on divorce proceedings.
Thursday 14 December 2017 09:13, UK
After a week when the PM thought things were back on track and just hours before she heads to the EU summit to try to seal sufficient progress, the House of Commons has taken back control of Brexit - from Theresa May.
But this is about much more than a single vote.
It had been a dramatic evening in the Chamber. They should have seen this defeat coming weeks ago.
Amendment seven was always identified as the one that the rebels would go to the wall over. What led to it was weeks of cross party co-operation of interested backbenchers.
The verbal scraps between the Tory Europhile mutineers, and the serial Eurosceptic rebels, were really quite extraordinary, typified by Anna Soubry's repeated incredulity at the invocations to loyalty from Bernard Jenkin.
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As relevant though was the therapeutic support effort to the Tory rebels offered by the Labour arch-remainers such as Chris Bryant and Chuka Umunna, with a handy list of the number of times Messrs Jenkin, Cash & Redwood had rebelled.
The rebels sat tightly together avoiding even leaving the chamber partly so as to dodge the attentions of nervous Government whips.
In the end being labelled mutineers and featured on the front page of the Daily Telegraph acted as a unifying force. None will care that the Daily Mail now asks of they are proud of themselves, two have already replied "yes".
Because the last thing the party and the minority Government now needs is to ostracise 11 MPs, also known as "its working majority".
And yet immediately the same team and more will look to strike down the Government attempt to enshrine the exit date on of March 29 on the face of the EU Withdrawal Bill.
If anything the rebellion on this is larger.
What does this mean in practice?
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That the Government will not be able to enact executive powers to amend UK law to create a functioning post Brexit statute book, until a new law is passed backing the withdrawal agreement.
Therefore Parliament can now send back an agreement negotiated by the PM with the EU. It doesn't derail Brexit, but it does provide a Parliamentary handbrake.
The Commons now has considerable leverage.
But this occurs against an undeniable shift in tone from the Commons over the past few weeks.
Tory grandees, former ministers, such as Sir Oliver Heald or Dominic Grieve, or Stephen Hammond, feel at liberty to rebel. But well beyond the mutineers are a larger group of MPs uneasy with where Brexit is heading.
John Stevenson, the MP for Carlisle, voted in both lobbies, but he alongside other loyal non-rebels has expressed interest in a softer Brexit on the EFTA or EEA model.
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Opposition MPs with unimpeachable Brexit credentials, such as John Mann, have now also been floating the Switzerland and Norway models of soft Brexit.
Labour's Leave rebels who had been voting with the Government have also shrunk to just two - Kate Hoey and Frank Field.
The Commons always had a majority for a softer Brexit, that sentiment is now expressing itself, and if it continues to grow, it now has the capacity to assert itself on the Government's Brexit plan.
Again if that was the limit of what was going on, perhaps it would merely represent a procedural change.
But in the phase one agreement, there is at least a fallback option now of "full alignment" with Single Market and Customs Union rules, which points in the same direction as the Parliamentary arithmetic.
And then there is the transition phase that the Government so dearly wants to discuss, and quickly.
That will be offered by the EU on existing terms, with the UK effectively remaining part of the Single Market and Customs Union for that period currently envisaged at "around two years".
And finally there is the fact that there is a range of future relationship items from aviation to data, where some blurring of the European Court of Justice jurisdiction red line is required.
It was a knife-edge defeat, but one today's EU sUmmit will be well aware of. The real question is whether it suggests a more fundamental change in direction for Brexit.
Parliament now has one hand on the Brexit steering wheel. There's not much the Brexit establishment, the former rebels, can do about it, as not much was done to resist transition or a £40bn financial settlement.
Their votes are banked in order merely to get any sort of Brexit at all. It is the mutineers with leverage in this internal Tory negotiation over exactly what sort.