Today, Explained - Once, twice, three times a Brexit

Episode Date: March 29, 2019

Theresa May staked her prime ministership on her Brexit deal and, for the third time, the British Parliament rejected it. Vox's Jen Kirby explains a very bad day for Theresa May. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vanderplug! Ramosfirm! It's your last day at Today Explained! I know, sad day, sad day. You're walking off into the Friday sunset and never coming back. That's true, that is true. Which is a perfect time to mention that right now, Today Explained listeners, if they want to post a job at LinkedIn, they can go to linkedin.com slash explain

and get $50 off their first job post. Oh, wow. Job posting. There you go. Yeah, that's LinkedIn.com slash explained. Luke, I got to let you know, though, terms and conditions apply. Uh-oh. Terms and conditions. I'll bet those are fine, though. Jen Kirby of House of Ox. We haven't covered Brexit since like July because it seems like Theresa May just keeps failing to Brexit. But it also seems like this thing just keeps getting worse and worse.

Yes, the chaos never ends. And today was supposed to be the Brexit deadline, but the deadline got extended. Yes, that chaos never ends. And today was supposed to be the Brexit deadline, but the deadline got extended? Yes, that's correct. So today, March 29th, 2019, was supposed to be the day the UK officially left the European Union. But last week, because the United Kingdom still can't figure out how they're going to leave the European Union, they got a short extension from the EU and the new deadline is April 12th. But there was a big third vote on the Brexit deal today. Yeah, it was a little bit different than the votes in the past. But for all intents and purposes, yeah, there was a third vote and it failed and we still don't have a plan to leave the European Union. Okay, so take us through the motions. What led up to this vote today?

In some respects, it starts back in June 2016 for the referendum where the UK decided that it would leave the European Union. The total number of votes cast in favor of Remain was 16,141,241. The total number of votes cast in favour of Leave was 17,410,742. Since then, basically what the UK has been doing is trying to negotiate a deal with the European Union so that it can leave in an orderly fashion. And then once it leaves, it will negotiate a future relationship with the EU. Whatever that will be will be decided sometime in the future after Brexit. So May negotiated this deal back in November with the European Union,

and this has been the final deal, the one that she presented back to Parliament, which has to approve the deal in what's called a meaningful vote. The deal is in two parts. There's this withdrawal agreement, which is basically the divorce settlement between the EU and the UK.

It's like we're breaking up, and this is how we get our houses in order. The second part is this very short political declaration, which basically is a promise that after we break up, we hope we can be friends and we'll figure out our future relationship. That deal was brought back to the UK Parliament. They defeated it by a historic margin. The worst defeat for a prime minister in modern British history. Was this vote one or vote two? This is vote one.

Okay. So January, defeat by 230 votes. Okay. So like just a crippling defeat for it. Yes, the worst ever. Just horrendous. And this is because both sides have a lot of beef with what's in this deal. Yeah. So in May's party, she's in the conservative party and her party

has a lot of hardliners who are very pro-Brexit and they want to leave and they want to sever that relationship and put as much distance as possible between London and Brussels. They want to get out and get out fast. And they opposed the deal because they felt it was too soft of a Brexit. There's a lot of complicated reasons, which I don't know if we even have time to go into, but they just felt it would basically keep the UK in an inferior relationship with the EU. Yeah. Check out our earlier episode from July if you want all the juice there. It's called Brexiting is Hard to Do. So it is. And on the other side, the Labour Party,

which is the opposition party to May, one, doesn't want her to be prime minister or want her in power at all. And they want to negotiate their own Brexit deal. So kind of on principle, they're going to object to pretty much anything she comes forward unless it's something in it for them. Right. And how does it go the second time around? When was that again? The second time was in March, two weeks ago,

although it feels like 10 years ago at this point in Brexit adjusted terms. And that was this marathon week of votes where May put up her deal again. And at that point, it was two weeks, a little more than two weeks until the then Brexit deadline of March 29th. And the deal failed again by a huge margin, 150 votes just about take or give. So after that vote, May basically allowed for two other votes. One was a vote on whether the United Kingdom wanted to leave the EU without any deal. So just crash out, whatever. We'll see how it goes on March 29th.

And the UK rejected that. They said, no, we want a deal, even though they don't want the deal that May has negotiated. And then on the third day, the parliament voted to ask the EU for an extension to basically push back the Brexit deadline, which did happen. So that's how we ended up here with a little more time and opportunity for yet one more vote. Okay, so what made this vote today, this third vote on the deal, different? Usually if a motion by the government gets defeated, it's weird to kind of keep putting it back and hope that it gets passed. So the Speaker of the House, John Bercow. Quite a character. Very much. He has great ties, has a very kind of jovial way of negotiating a very difficult time in British parliamentary history.

Mr. Lewis, get a grip of yourself, man. Come, take up yoga, you'll find it beneficial, man. Seems like a human thesaurus. Yes, he has very interesting vocabulary. Killer vocab. That dude definitely went to college. He did indeed. Hitherto, I had always thought that the Honorable Gentleman, the member for Angelian and Yar, was a notably cheeky chappy in the chamber. But I realize that the role of cheeky chappy is not confined to the Scottish National Party. But Theresa May's government doesn't really like him so much because he basically said,

unless you can bring back a deal that's very different than the one you brought back before, I'm not going to let Parliament vote on it. In order that there should be no misunderstanding, I wish to make clear that I do expect the government to meet the test of change. The EU has said, we're not renegotiating this deal. So that road has expired. There was no chance of getting a different deal. So she had to kind of change it a little bit. And one way she did that was by basically splitting apart those two components of the deal,

the divorce settlement, the withdrawal agreement, and the political declaration. And she said, we're just going to vote on this withdrawal agreement, which is the legal text that says we're going to break up in an orderly fashion, and we're going to leave off the future relationship for a second. And she's allowed to do that? She was allowed to do that. The speaker said, all right, that's enough changes for me. And the EU indicated that would be fine for them. And had it passed, that would have automatically moved the deadline from April 12th to May 22nd. So that's one part. The other reason this was very different is because Theresa May kind of made a bargain with the hardliners in her party and said, basically,

who do you hate more, me or my deal? And it turns out they hated Theresa May more. And all decided that even though they thought the deal was horrible and a bad deal for Britain and the worst kind of Brexit possible, that, well, maybe if they had the opportunity to have a new prime minister, the deal wasn't so bad. So a lot of people who had rejected her deal before switched sides and voted for it this time. Because she staked her job on it. She said, if you vote for this deal, I'll resign. Yep. She said, if you approve my deal, I will resign. She didn't give a specific timeline, but she basically said, I'll be out and I'll let somebody else negotiate that future

relationship. How unorthodox is that for a British prime minister who's having little to no success securing a deal that is the reason for his or her existence to say, sign up for my deal and I'll peace out? Like, if you think about Trump and the wall or something, you can't imagine a world in which he's like, give me the wall and I'll retire. No, you can't. I mean, I think one thing about Brexit is these times are so strange, particularly in British politics, that it's hard to kind of even make comparisons. But Theresa May has kind of been on the ropes for a long time. If you kind of go back in time, she faced a noconfidence vote from her own party, which she barely

survived. She faced a no-confidence vote from Parliament, which was an attempt to basically kick her out of power. She's very weakened. Her party has been bucking her, clearly, because they didn't vote for her deal two times. So she really doesn't have a lot of authority. And this was a way of basically saying, if my approach is really destroying the chance of letting the UK make a deal with the EU, then I'll step aside and let somebody else from my party figure it out. So how did it go? Maybe better than expected, but not great. The vote went down yet again on Friday. The final margin was the eyes to the right.

Two hundred and eighty six. The nose to the left. Three hundred and forty four. So the nose have it. The nose have it. Unlock. So it lost by a majority of 58, which back in January would have probably been a victory for May, but now kind of leaves the UK with still no plan and not quite sure what it's going to do next. But she's definitely not stepping down. It's not really clear. Obviously, if some deal gets passed at some point, she may still leave. And it still seems very unlikely that she will survive much longer just because there's only so much one

prime minister can take. But at least her bargain, if you vote for my deal, I'll step down. For now, that's, I guess, on hold. Vanderplug, do you have a LinkedIn? I do have a LinkedIn, yeah. Thank you. My work as a busboy in high school, I don't know if that's on there, but, you know, good times bussing those tables. Did you ever match with any employers on LinkedIn, Luke? I never really did, but I did feel like if I ever needed to, that would be a resource for me, you know? No, because apparently LinkedIn jobs makes it easy to get matched with quality candidates using knowledge of both hard skills and soft skills to match you with the people who fit your role the best. There you go. What are your soft skills, Luke? We know all about your hard skills.

You're good at cutting tape. You're like a good story crafter. But tell us more about your soft skills. I'm, let's see, soft skills. You mean like my jovial spirit? Post a job today at linkedin.com slash explain and get $50 off your first job post. Luke, you know what I got to say before we go? What? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Terms and conditions apply. Jen, how's the United Kingdom doing right now? I mean, this was contentious from the moment the referendum was approved.

How much worse has it gotten amidst this political turmoil? The fundamental problem, I think, since the 2016 referendum was that remain was kind of obvious. It was the status quo. It was what everyone was used to. And leave, you know, leaving the European Union was basically anything anyone wanted to be because it had never been done before. And there was no precedent. And so if you wanted to leave to stop immigration, then sure, sounds great. And if you wanted to leave so that the UK could make its own trade deals and follow its own rules, well, yeah, that sounded great. If you wanted to leave so you could get more money for the National Health Service, well, yeah, that sounded great. But now, two years plus later, promises that were made in the

leave campaign haven't come to fruition for a lot of really, really difficult reasons. So the Brexit as promised, the Brexit of the 2016 referendum might just not be possible in 2019. How have the issues that people are fighting about, how have they changed since the initial referendum or how have they stayed exactly the same? There's definitely been a softening. There's been recent polls that say if the referendum were held today, like remain might win, but not by a huge margin. People who are leave are still very strongly leave and have kind of doubled down in that camp. And those people who are Remain, you know, want to find a way to reverse the process either through another public vote or even just basically canceling Brexit. And what everyone else is trying to do in the middle

is figure out, OK, how do we leave the European Union and deliver on Brexit, but keep the relationship with the EU so that we don't take a huge economic hit and can still kind of get the benefits? And those are kind of the areas people are trying to grapple with. And then there's this super sticky situation with Ireland. What role has that played? I mean, it's kind of been the reason that May's deal has failed to get through, at least with the hardliners. So Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, which is also a European member state, there's a border between them. Northern Ireland had a conflict during the late 1960s, 70s, 80s, up to the 1990s called the Troubles. Ulster, 1980. British servicemen in action.

Opposing them, an IRA which has become increasingly sophisticated as well. The statistics of violence this year in Northern Ireland are the lowest for a decade. Deaths, 72. Injuries, 472. Explosions, 297. Shootings, 622. In Ulster, that's an improvement. Broadly speaking, you have the nationalists who identify very strongly with Ireland and believe in a united Ireland, and you have unionists who feel very strongly British and identify with Britain. And so there was conflict over this sort of issue of what they were.

And this bombed out building here, that was the town hall. And they blew it up, so the town hall moved. So they blew it up again. And all that was burned down or blown up five times. So far, almost 1,000 people have died in the troubles of Northern Ireland, and there'll be more. Remember the human cost.

That came to an end in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement. And after a generation of bloodshed and decades of division and acrimony, George Mitchell ushers in what the whole island hopes will be a new era of peace. The peace process has been largely successful. It's still a very divided country, but being in the European Union allowed the peace process to happen because it provided for an open border. It made it so that if you felt like you were Irish,

you didn't have the barriers that were there before. And the border during that time period was kind of the site of all the conflict. The border meanders for nearly 300 miles. And over the past five years, it's become a focal point in the middle of a terrorist war. It was heavily fortified, military installations. It was a target for attacks from dissident groups like the Irish Republican Army. If the UK breaks up with the EU, that's an international border again. You can't just have people driving their goods across it.

And so there's a fear if a hard border goes back into place, it will reignite all of those issues. So the EU, especially Ireland, want to keep that border open and so does the UK. But the only way to do that is have some way where the UK is following some of the rules of the European Union. In order to do that, the withdrawal agreement included what's called this Irish backstop. The backstop. The backstop, yeah. And what the backstop did was basically say, all right, after the UK and is at the end of this transition period, if they can't figure out a solution, the UK will follow some of the customs rules of the EU and Northern Ireland

will have a slightly closer relationship with the EU. Now, the hardline Brexiters hate this because they're basically like, hey, you're trapping the UK in the customs union. It'll be fine. We'll figure out a solution. But it's not really clear there is a solution in sight so that's kind of been the central issue in the withdrawal agreement that has caused such objections from the hardline brexiters so in addition to trying to figure out this very complicated exit from the european union the uk is trying to maintain a somewhat fragile peace in northern ireland yeah they want to make sure that they preserve that peace process and ensure that that border doesn't become sort of a flashpoint as it used to be.

So I guess the million dollar question, Jen, is what happens next? There's sort of two options for the UK. Right now, the Brexit deadline is April 12th. The UK can either not do anything and leave the European Union on that date without a deal. The other option that the EU gave is we can give you a much longer extension, but that will be a very long extension. This won't be a couple of months. It could be a year. It could be longer. But there's a couple of caveats. One, they want to know what the UK is going to do differently. They're not going to do this so that they can just argue amongst themselves and vote on a deal for a fourth, fifth time. So that something different could be a totally new deal with a much softer Brexit, perhaps. So that will involve new

negotiations or maybe something like a second referendum where you're putting the question of Brexit back to the people, or if they maybe want to have general elections and try to elect new leaders to figure out if that will break the impasse. So there has to be something different than what's been happening in order for the EU to go for that. The other issue is the United Kingdom will have to participate in parliamentary elections for Europe, so the European Parliament. And those elections are starting May 23rd. And so the idea of the UK participating is really kind of politically toxic for a lot of members of Parliament, because for those that represent constituencies that really want to leave, the idea of re-participating in

the European government and then staying in for a really long, undecided time is just really problematic. And another thing to watch out for on Monday is Parliament is going to be debating some alternative options, like softer types of Brexit and also a public vote to potentially confirm any sort of deal with the public. This was a process that started on Wednesday where parliament voted on a bunch of options. It was a process called indicative votes. They put a bunch of options, no deal Brexit, soft Brexit, second referendum, nothing won the majority, but a couple of them came close. So Monday, hopefully they're going to try to win over the holdouts to some of those ideas, maybe make a couple of compromises and see if they can present to Theresa May a new plan that Parliament could support.

Right now, the European Union has announced an emergency summit on April 10th. So they're expecting something to happen in the next two weeks or so. Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you! to happen in the next two weeks or so. What's the party line on whether this referendum was a terrible idea at this point? I mean, hundreds of thousands of people were marching in the streets of London last week, right, opposing Brexit. But this was the quote unquote will of the people. Does everyone seem to agree now that it was just a bad idea to leave

this up to the people? Or does it still have supporters? As I said before, there's still a segment of the country that's really pro-leave. And in some respects, those opinions have hardened because they believe the EU is playing hardball and not kind of giving the UK what it wants. But I think a lot of people in retrospect realized that the referendum was a bad idea because people didn't really understand what was at stake. Again, the leave was not specific. People didn't really understand perhaps the relationships between the European Union and the UK and why they're so complicated and knotty. So it just kind of boiled something that's really, really complex into two simple choices,

and that has a very crazy outcome, which is the Brexit that we're dealing with now. Jen Kirby reports on stuff that happens outside the United States for Vox. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. Vanderplug, if you post a job today at linkedin.com slash explained, Thank you for all your work. Thank you for making so many great ads with us. Remember that one time we rode scooters around DuPont Circle? I do remember, yeah. What a time. This whole time at Today Explained has meant the entire world to me.

Happy trails. Thanks, Sean.