The UK could well have three elections in 2019 European elections, local elections, and a general election to break the impasse

Parliamentary votes on Brexit are simple enough: 641 MPs shout at each other for a couple of hours and then everything gets voted down. It has happened to Theresa May’s exit deal with the European Union, which went down to the biggest and fourth-biggest defeats in British political history respectively. It has happened to Jeremy Corbyn’s various proposals to soften Brexit. It has happened to plans to stop it, it to delay it and to implement it.

At least this week, the defeat of every option on the table was by design, rather than by accident. MPs took part in a series of “indicative votes”, in which instead of queuing up to walk through two different lobbies (one lobby to vote for the motion, one lobby to vote against the motion), MPs filled out pieces of paper, voting in favour of as many or as few potential resolutions to the Brexit deadlock as they wanted to back.

Now the three most popular of those propositions – for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union but remain in a customs union with the bloc, for the United Kingdom to leave the political project but remain within the economic and customs framework, and for whatever deal is struck to be the subject of a public vote, with a choice between leaving on those terms or saying in the EU – will be voted on again, with MPs given an opportunity to once again winnow down those options further on Monday.

What has a chance of passing?

Assuming that MPs mean it when they say are looking to compromise, it’s plausible that any of these propositions could command a majority. In the case of a second referendum, more MPs made a positive choice to vote for it than any of the other options, but more MPs also made a conscious choice to oppose it than either of the two remaining ways forward.

Staying within the EU’s customs union came the closest to passing – if four MPs had changed their minds, then it would have won the support of the House. And the proposal to stay within the economic project but to leave the political institutions attracted the least opposition from MPs.

So all have some chance of passing, but they would require MPs to be willing to give up something they really want in order to have something they can live with, and it isn’t clear if parliamentarians are willing to do that.

Even if they do, all of the possible options that could command a majority of all MPs have the same big problem: they cannot command a majority among the governing Conservatives. Mostly, in our electoral system, the party in charge of the government and the party with a majority in Parliament are one and the same, or, in the case of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, the two parties in government can command a comfortable majority for their programme.

There is no resolution to the Brexit crisis that can both be negotiated with the European Union and command support from the governing party. What usually happens with the government and Parliament are at odds is that one side seeks to change the other: in other words, the government goes to the country in a general election to get a majority for whatever change it wants.

The three elections

The problem is that by law, elections in the United Kingdom must be given at least 25 working days, so we can think very carefully about all the options, and decide which party best represents our views before voting for the Conservatives or Labour because our terrible electoral system leaves us with a forced choice between the two major parties.

But as it stands, the United Kingdom will leave the EU on 12 April whether or not it does so with a deal or not. The immediate economic and logistical shock of a no deal Brexit would certainly tip the balance of an election away from the government and towards the opposition. That means that before having an election, the government would have to seek a long extension to the Brexit process, keeping the United Kingdom in the European Union very probably until the end of 2020.

But for the United Kingdom’s membership to be legally watertight, the UK will need to elect members of the European Parliament – as you can’t be subject to laws you don’t have the ability to shape in the parliament under EU law.

That would mean the United Kingdom would have at least three elections in one year: the first are the local elections in the first week of May, which between the excitement over Brexit almost everyone has forgotten. The second are the European elections, due to be held in the third week of May. And the third would be a general election, to break the impasse between the Conservative government and the hung parliament – with the very real possibility of a fourth election or referendum if the next election returns a parliament which, like this one, is finely balanced between the United Kingdom’s warring parties.

Stephen Bush is political editor at the New Statesman. Twitter: @stephenkb