Theresa May postpones the tricky Brexit decisions again

IF POLITICS is the art of survival, Theresa May is proving adept at it. A week ago she adroitly averted resignations by Brexit ministers. This week the prime minister persuaded MPs to reject all amendments made by the Lords to the EU withdrawal bill. Yet her habit of putting off tough decisions and offering concessions only at the last minute has risks. It is also steering her away from a hard Brexit.

The week’s most dramatic scenes were in the Commons. Mrs May faced down an amendment designed to make Britain join a customs union with the EU, by deferring the issue until the trade and customs bills return next month. But until late on June 12th she was heading for defeat on an amendment by a Tory MP, Dominic Grieve, to give Parliament the right to decide what happens if the Commons rejects the eventual Brexit deal. Mr Grieve’s aim is to stop the government presenting MPs with Hobson’s choice: take the deal, or get Brexit with no deal at all.

David Davis, the Brexit secretary, huffed about an unconstitutional bid to usurp the government’s treaty-making role. Yet the day began badly for the government, with the unexpected resignation of a junior justice minister, Philip Lee, who said he wanted to fight Brexit from the backbenches. And party whips soon realised they had to give ground to avoid defeat. The proceedings took on a surreal air as the solicitor-general, Robert Buckland, repeatedly interrupted Mr Grieve’s speech to offer concessions. In the end Mrs May promised Tory rebels she would accept the thrust of the Grieve amendment when the bill returns to the Lords. Brexiteers’ subsequent efforts to dilute this offer are unlikely to succeed.

Even so, some critics said the rebels had been sold a pup because they were too scared to challenge Mrs May’s leadership. They certainly do not want to oust her. Indeed, part of the prime minister’s appeal to her backbenchers rests on her weakness. In effect, she is warning that, if she softens her Brexit policy too much, she might be replaced by a hard Brexiteer such as Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary.

Yet both Parliament and Mrs May are stronger than they seem. The concession to Mr Grieve matters because it makes a no-deal Brexit, already tricky for lack of preparation, all but impossible, and a soft Brexit far more likely. Cross-party co-operation in a hung Parliament has become a key factor. Anna Soubry, a Tory rebel, and Chuka Umunna, a Labour pro-European, have teamed up. Mr Grieve is close to Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, who worked with him as director of public prosecutions when Mr Grieve served as attorney-general.

Playing down the no-deal threat is also driving Mrs May, as a matter of logic, in the direction of a softer Brexit. So is a growing chorus from businesses worried about leaving the customs union and the EU’s single market. This week the president of the CBI business lobby, Paul Drechsler, warned that sections of manufacturing might become “extinct”. As if on cue, Britain’s biggest carmaker, JLR, announced that it was moving all production of its Land Rover Discovery model from Birmingham to Slovakia.

Above all looms Northern Ireland. Even as Westminster was agonising over Mr Grieve’s amendment, Brussels was debating something else altogether: the “backstop” solution to avoid a hard border in Ireland. Although Mrs May insists that this fallback option will not be needed, she has put forward a plan for a backstop under which all of Britain, not just Northern Ireland, would be in a customs union with the EU. And she has faced down Mr Davis’s demand that it be made temporary by saying only that it is “expected” not to last beyond December 2021. That is far from being a time limit.

Her delayed white paper on Brexit, now due in early July, will tout a technological solution to avoid a hard border, known as “maximum facilitation”. Yet because the EU doubts this will ever work, it is now treating the backstop as the most likely outcome. It wants to add regulatory alignment on top, to avoid border checks, and it is unhappy with Mrs May’s suggestion to apply the backstop to the whole country, because this could give Britain full access to the single market without all its obligations. But Brussels welcomes Mrs May’s acceptance that, at least for some years, Britain should stay closely tied to the EU. That Brexiteers are up in arms about this (see Bagehot) is just another bonus for Brussels.

One sad feature is the ineffectiveness of the Labour opposition. Jeremy Corbyn, the party leader, has got better at taunting Mrs May for her indecision and cabinet splits. Labour now backs a customs union. But despite a big rebellion by Labour MPs backing the European Economic Area (or Norwegian) option to keep Britain in the single market, Labour is officially against, because two-thirds of its seats voted for Brexit and it would entail accepting free movement of EU citizens.

Yet both points have answers. Polls suggest that a large majority of Labour voters backed Remain in 2016, and a similar majority now want to stay in the single market. As for free movement, Stephen Kinnock, a backbench supporter of the Norwegian option, says constraints on it would be far easier to negotiate under the emergency provisions of the EEA treaty than under Labour’s preferred bespoke model of full access to the single market. As the Brexit deadline nears, Labour could yet shift its position on this further.

This would parallel Mrs May’s own movement. So far her survival skills have served her well. But having seen off anti-Brexit rebels this week, her next challenge may come from the Brexiteers. The EU is showing worryingly little negotiating flexibility in return for her concessions. And the clock is ticking towards Brexit day next March. The prime minister cannot defer the difficult decisions much longer.