A Final Say could be on the horizon – here’s how we could get a second Brexit referendum

Step one is Yvette Cooper’s second attempt at winning the vote for her amendment

Campaigners who want the people to have a Final Say on Brexit have announced that a march will take place on 23 March demanding that the matter be “Put to the People”. But what needs to happen for their demand to be met?

There can be a new referendum on Brexit only if there is a majority in the House of Commons for it. That means Jeremy Corbyn has to support it, and he has to ask Labour MPs to vote for it. Some of them would ignore his request, but they might be outweighed by a number of pro-EU Conservative MPs voting against their party line.

So far, the Labour leader gives every sign of refusing to back a second referendum, but we are about to enter a phase of the Brexit crisis in which that might change.

The next step is Yvette Cooper’s second attempt on 27 February to win support for her plan to rule out a no-deal Brexit. If she wins the vote on her amendment, it would provide time for a bill that would require the prime minister to ask to postpone Brexit if she cannot get a deal through parliament by 13 March – just two weeks before the date we are supposed to be leaving.

That would force MPs to choose between the prime minister’s deal and a Brexit delay. It is not obvious how Tory MPs who advocate leaving without a deal – or leaving on World Trade Organisation terms as they prefer to call it – would vote if that option were taken away from them. Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he would prefer the prime minister’s deal to staying in the EU; Boris Johnson has said the opposite.

So a new vote on the prime minister’s deal – with whatever cosmetic changes have been negotiated with Brussels in the meantime – could go either way. But this time, if MPs vote to reject the deal, Theresa May would have to ask the EU27 for an extension to the Article 50 deadline.

The EU27 would probably agree. They may be exasperated with us, but if they see a chance that we may change our minds and stay in the EU they want to make it easy for us.

Let us assume, then, that Brexit is postponed, perhaps initially for just three months, to allow us to “finalise” our negotiating position. Then the question would be: what will happen when the extension period runs out? The cycle would be repeated. Leaving without a deal would still be unacceptable to a large majority of MPs, so a new version of the Cooper bill would probably be passed to seek a further extension if a deal still cannot be approved.

At this point a new referendum could come into play. There would still be little chance of a general election – it seems most unlikely that a majority of MPs would vote for it. It is frequently suggested that a softer Brexit could win a majority if the prime minister’s deal could not – that if she accepted Labour’s plan for a permanent customs union she could get it through. But that overlooks the problem that, for every Labour MP such a plan would win over, it would lose a Tory MP on the other side.

So it could be that, finally, Jeremy Corbyn would yield to the pressure from Labour members – and maybe from public opinion by that stage – to support a referendum as a way out of an endless cycle of Brexit postponements.

It should be clear, however, that the only form of referendum that is likely to be approved by parliament would be one that offered a choice between the latest version of the prime minister’s deal and remaining in the EU. The one option that parliament would not allow on the ballot paper would be that of a no-deal Brexit.

For more details about the Put It To The People march – and to sign up – please visit https://www.peoples-vote.uk/march

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