MPs to vote on four alternatives to Theresa May’s Brexit deal on Monday night

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

MPs will vote on four alternatives to Theresa May’s thrice-rejected Brexit deal, including a customs union and a Norway-style deal, as backbenchers seek to force the government to change course.

With 11 days to go until Britain is due to leave the European Union, with or without a deal, the Speaker, John Bercow, selected four of the options tabled by MPs for consideration in “indicative votes”.

They are a customs union, suggested by the former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke; Nick Boles’s “common market 2.0”; Labour MP Peter Kyle’s call for a “confirmatory” referendum; and SNP Joanna Cherry’s motion, aimed at allowing parliament to prevent a no-deal Brexit.

Labour tabled its own Brexit policy, including a customs union and single market alignment, as a separate option at the last minute on Monday, but Bercow declined to allow MPs to vote on it.

The indicative votes process kicked off after MPs supported a business motion tabled by the former Conservative minister Oliver Letwin, setting out how it would take place, by 322 votes to 277 – a majority of 45.

Cabinet ministers will once again be instructed to boycott the votes, as MPs make a second attempt to coalesce around an alternative deal.

The prime minister had suggested she would “engage constructively” with the indicative votes process, set up by a cross-party group of MPs led by Letwin. But Downing Street sources confirmed that the government would whip Conservative MPs to oppose the business motion kicking off Monday’s votes.

Backbench MPs and junior ministers will then be allowed a free vote on the various options being considered.

Labour said that unlike last Monday’s indicative votes, which resulted in all eight options being rejected, it would whip its MPs to support “common market 2.0”, the plan involving single market membership drawn up by a cross-party group including Boles, and the Labour MPs Lucy Powell and Stephen Kinnock.

The group have been in close consultation with the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, about couching their plan in a way the party could support – although it involves accepting the free movement of people, about which some Labour MPs in leave seats have concerns.

The deeply divided cabinet, which May’s own chief whip, Julian Smith, described in a BBC interview on Monday as the “worst example of ill-discipline in cabinet in British political history”, will be instructed not to vote.

Play Video 0:53 Tory chief whip attacks cabinet for 'worst ill-discipline in history' - video

Asked about Smith’s comments, May’s spokesman said she continued to have confidence in her chief whip. “I’ll leave it to historians to make their judgments on history,” he said.

Smith suggested the government should have been clearer in the aftermath of the 2017 general election it would have to tack towards a softer Brexit deal in order to build a majority in the hung parliament.

The prime minister’s spokesman said “soft Brexit” was “not terminology the prime minister has ever used”, but underlined her continued objections to Britain remaining part of a customs union.

If MPs do support a closer future trading relationship with the EU, the prime minister will face a fateful choice about whether to accept and implement that decision.

Her spokesman declined to say what she would do, but underlined the government’s continued opposition to a customs union.

Would the UK be better off in or out of a customs union? Read more

“She has said on a number of occasions that she believes it is important for the UK to have its own trade policy,” he said.

Many Brexiters on the Conservative benches, including within the cabinet, are vehemently opposed to accepting a customs union. The European Research Group deputy chair, Steve Baker, told the BBC’s Politics Live on Monday he would not rule out voting against the government on a no-confidence motion, if May embraced the policy.

“I think it would really shatter the party. I’ve said that before. I’m not sure what would happen … It would be a clear breach of our manifesto promises,” he said.

Pressed on whether he could even support a no-confidence motion in those circumstances, he said: “At this point I can foresee no circumstances while, as a Conservative MP, I voted against the government in a confidence motion. But we are approaching the point where the stakes are now so very high, and so transcend party politics and what this country is about, and the fundamental British value that political power rests on consent, that I think these things are coming on to the table.”

Downing Street suggested it would be for the cabinet at a marathon meeting on Tuesday to decide how to proceed, if, as expected, MPs supported a softer deal.

But government sources also hinted May could still aim to bring her deal to parliament for a fourth time on Wednesday – when Letwin and his colleagues plan to set aside another day of parliamentary business, potentially to pass legislation implementing the outcome of Monday’s votes.

The prime minister warned MPs last Friday when her deal was rejected by MPs for the third time: “I fear we are reaching the limits of this process in this house”, but it was not clear how she hoped to proceed.