Cooper defeats no-deal Brexit

Labour MP Yvette Cooper has succeeded in blocking the government from leaving the EU without a deal unless MPs have specifically consented.

Cooper’s cross-party amendment to the Finance Bill, which passed by 303 to 296 votes, is a major victory, making the Conservatives the first ruling party to lose the Finance Bill vote in 41 years. The amendment would curb the government’s tax administration powers on the 29 March 2019 exit day unless one of three conditions has been met. These are that Parliament has approved a deal with the EU; an Art 50 extension has been agreed with the other 27 EU Member States; or Parliament has specifically consented through a vote to a no-deal Brexit.

Some 20 Conservatives rebelled to vote for Cooper’s amendment, and the Labour leadership also gave support.

Speaking in the Commons, Cooper said: ‘I think we have a responsibility not to just stand by.’

Meanwhile, barrister David Wolchover of Ridgeway Chambers, writing in NLJ this week, confidently predicts that both opposition and ruling parties will eventually support a second referendum, if the prime minister’s deal is defeated (see p12).

This new People’s Vote could remedy the ‘fiasco’ of the first one, Wolchover says, as long as it was ‘properly constructed and managed’ and included a threshold. The mechanism for it could be a standalone bill in the House of Lords along with a separate Bill postponing the 29 March 2019 exit day.

Wolchover reiterates the point that the 2016 referendum was advisory only and contends that Theresa May’s decision to activate Art 50 on the basis alone of the referendum result ‘flew in the face of the EU Referendum Act 2015 and as such was arguably unconstitutional’. He also complains of ‘barefaced gerrymandering’ since nearly a million expatriates were denied a vote and of ‘serious criminal offending’ in terms of Vote Leave’s £450,000 overspend above the £7m limit.