Theresa May’s Brexit is over – and a general election is now all but inevitable

Responding to her own defeat, the prime minister said: ‘I fear we are reaching the limits of this process in this house.’ She’s right. We simply can’t keep going on like this

There are things about Brexit that, however desperate and damaging, we have come to regard as given. We accept, for instance, that the person most to blame for Theresa May’s terrible Brexit deal failing for the third time today is, in fact, Theresa May. We take for granted that she will try to blame others for this failure.

We realise that every day, May and her venal, incompetent government will sink even lower in terms of what they are willing to do, how much chaos they will inflict upon the country, simply to hang on to power­. And we know that the fundamentalist Conservative European Research Group will endlessly bluster and flip-flop in pursuit of its unhinged ideal of a no-deal Brexit. Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson today voting for a deal they’d repeatedly said was thewful and would turn Britain into a vassal state and a slave state was grotesque, but not at all surprising, such is our rock bottom opinion of both.

But now it seems the Brexit scales have also fallen from the eyes of most of the Labour MPs still trying to find a way to support a Tory Brexit deal. An impressive push of lobbying, petitioning and whipping of Labour MPs who either support Leave or represent heavily Leave-voting areas, ensured that all but five voted against May’s deal.

This also speaks to the foolishness of May’s approach: she tried to bribe Labour MPs by promising money to their constituencies (which we would readily be seen as corruption if it were happening anywhere else). She tried to isolate them, pick them off one by one. She tried to assure that, even though they were voting for a blind Brexit, parliament would have control of the process.

It didn’t work because what was placed before parliament today was so obviously a blank cheque – one written out not even to May, but to one of the Leave zealots waiting in the wings to replace her. It didn’t work because the withdrawal agreement in itself had nothing to offer even Leave-supporting Labour MPs: no guarantees on workers’ rights, no guarantees for EU citizens in the UK – and a legal restraint on public services and economic policies that would hamstring a Labour government.

Above all, it didn’t work because this despicable attempt to blackmail MPs over Brexit is happening while the country is dealing with record levels of child poverty, rising homelessness and foodbank use, stagnating wages, battered public services and all-pervasive insecurity – a nation desperate for change. Even if you well-meaningly intended to abide by the narrow referendum decision to leave the EU, no Labour MP would want to help inflict any of that on their constituents and their country for a moment longer.

With May’s Brexit deal seen off for a third time, it’s now looking more likely that we are heading for a general election. It’s expected that a customs union Brexit option and a second referendum will gain the most support in Monday’s indicative votes in parliament. But both those options will break the Conservatives, which means that May won’t go for either.

Responding to her own defeat, the prime minister said: “I fear we are reaching the limits of this process in this house.” The ERG, the Scottish nationalists and the Labour Party are all calling for May to go. And we can’t keep going on like this. Another election will be messy and poisoned by a far right pushing its toxic mix of migrant-bashing and betrayal narratives, facilitated by sections of the press. But it’s also the chance we desperately need, not just to get out of this chaotic mess but also to see off this destructive excuse for a government.