Government takes the bite out of Tory Brexit rebellion
The PM turned a potential defeat into a clever piece of manoeuvring by getting MPs on her own side to back her on Brexit.
Thursday 8 December 2016 10:18, UK
Gavin Williamson, the Government Chief Whip, reputed to keep a pet tarantula in his Commons office, emerged from the voting lobbies with a beaming smile.
"I think we did quite well!" he modestly told Sky News after the Government and Labour had majorities of 372 and 373 in
Certainly, the Chief Whip took the bite out of a Tory rebellion.
Only the veteran Europhile Ken Clarke voted against the Government in a one-man act of pro-EU defiance.
Only 48 hours earlier, it had been claimed up to 40 Conservative MPs were ready to vote for Labour's motion demanding a plan, enough to inflict a humiliating defeat on Theresa May.
But Labour was split, with 23 of its MPs voting against the Con-Lab stitch-up and an estimated further 56 abstaining.
The Labour MPs voting against the Article 50 timetable included Blairites like Ben Bradshaw and David Lammy and old school veteran Right-wingers like Graham Allen, Jim Dowd, Louise Ellman, Mike Gapes and Barry Sheerman.
But the Labour rebels also included some of the party's younger MPs elected for the first time in 2015, including Neil Coyle, Helen Hayes, Peter Kyle, Tulip Siddiq and Catherine West.
The MPs most delighted by the outcome of the voting were hard-line Euro-sceptics like Iain Duncan Smith.
"It's brilliant!" he said when the Chief Whip said the votes went "quite well".
MPs like IDS claim the big significance is that for the first time the House of Commons has voted to leave the EU, by backing the call to invoke Article 50 by 31 March next year.
In an interview after the debate, IDS told me the effect of the votes was to hand a huge "blank cheque" to the Prime Minister. That's a worry some of the pro-EU rebels have, too.
Ken Clarke was particularly gloomy after the votes, but told me he had been campaigning in favour of the Common Market and the EU in Parliament for 50 years and so he wasn't going to change now.
So who were the winners and losers?
The Tories are claiming a victory by forcing Labour to accept that Article 50 must be triggered by 31 March.
Labour claimed a victory in forcing the Conservatives not to oppose Labour's call for a published plan.
As many MPs claimed Labour had begun to act like a proper and grown-up Opposition for the first time in a while, it was Mrs May - stuck in Bahrain on a trade trip - who had to make a concession to avoid a defeat in the division lobbies.
Labour's Parliamentary tactics on Brexit were even being compared in some quarters to the brilliance of the late John Smith during the Maastricht battles of the 1990s. Steady on, we're not there yet!
But Sir Keir Starmer, who after all has only been an MP for a year and a half, is proving to be not just a good debater - well, he is a former Director of Public Prosecutions, for goodness sake - but also a shrewd Parliamentary tactician.
So he was undoubtedly one of the day's big winners.
And, in fairness, David Davis, the Brexit minister, handled a tricky situation well, too.
His experience as a backbench troublemaker as well as his experience as Europe Minister back in the 90s appears to have taught him how to deal patiently and politely with awkward customers in the Commons.
And despite making a big concession by accepting Labour's motion, the Prime Minister cleverly turned a potential defeat into a clever piece of manoeuvering, by getting the so-called "Remoaners" on her own side - apart from Ken Clarke - to back her on Brexit.
This frenetic day at Westminster also taught us a few things about the ups and downs of politics, beginning with good performances from two stand-ins at Prime Minister's Questions.
Three months ago, Emily Thornberry, Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary, was ridiculed after she accused Dermot Murnaghan of Sky News of sexism after she dismally failed to name the French Foreign Minister.
Now, deputising for Jeremy Corbyn, she was persistent and well-prepared in her probing of the Leader of the Commons,
David Lidington, on Brexit, the single market and the Customs Union.
Well prepared? These days her chief aide is one Damian McBride, formerly Robin to Gordon Brown's Batman when he was Prime Minister. And Emily packed plenty of "pow!", "zap!" and "wham!" at PMQs.
Mr Lidington, almost a forgotten man of the ministerial ranks until this PMQs stint, didn't do too badly, either, and delighted Tory MPs with his performance.
His best line was to claim Labour was "quarrelling like Mutiny On The Bounty as re-shot by the Carry On team".
Gavin Williamson clearly has a sense of humour too.
His tarantula is called Cronus, apparently named after a Greek god who came to power by castrating his own father before eating his own children to ensure they wouldn't oust him.
He didn't have to threaten any MPs intending to rebel with castration.
He just fed them a few tasty treats, such as a pledge of publishing a Brexit plan and a move to bind Labour into the Article 50 process.
Just like he would feed his large, hairy - and hungry - spider.