Teresa May's Brexit Deal Unceremoniously Crushed By MPs

The exit deal which Teresa May's UK Government had negotiated with the EU has been brutally voted down in the House of Commons in London today. The 'No' vote was by a resounding margin of 432 votes to 202. This was by far the most bruising defeat suffered in parliament by a British government since before the First World War.

The defeat comes as no surprise. Most commentators had realised long ago that there was no hope whatsoever that MPs would usher the Prime Minister's breakaway deal through. However, it is the scale of the defeat – which would, in any normal situation, see the immediate resignation of the man or woman in charge – which is so humiliating. In this case, Teresa May is likely to remain in No. 10 Downing Street. And for good reason: any change at the top in the Tory Party would likely result in the most appalling convulsions, sufficient perhaps to tear the organisation asunder.

For the moment , that reality probably makes Teresa May's position safe – unless, of course, she decides that she has had enough. In the meantime, the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn has tabled a motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister. However, the arithmetic in the House of Commons is such that the motion is unlikely to get the support of a majority of MPs.

That in itself offers a useful measure of the complete chaos into which the British political system has collapsed. Teresa May does not have the support even of her own party. And yet the alternative is deemed by a majority to be far too unpleasant to contemplate. Here, the extraordinary impact of Teresa May's politically catastrophic decision to call an election on 8 June 2017 becomes crystal clear. If one Tory leader, David Cameron, had miscalculated stupidly in promising a referendum on the UK's position as part of the EU, May's blunder proved to be of similar magnitude. Her snap election had been intended to give Britain "certainty, stability and strong government." Talk about the law of unforeseen consequences: that election achieved precisely the opposite, instead plunging the UK parliament into a period of unprecedented turmoil. And it is far from over yet.

We all know that the bizarre arithmetic of the result rendered her dependent on the 10 DUP MPs to stay in power – in effect giving Nigel Dodds and his cronies the whip hand in relation to Brexit negotiations. And that particular disastrous fall of the cards has resulted in the parliamentary anarchy – which led to the all-too predictable result today.

So where do we go from here? The truth is that no one – least of all Teresa May, it seems – has the faintest idea how the worst of all outcomes, a 'No Deal Brexit',  can be avoided. But what the old saw says is true: the show must go on. It would all be utterly hilarious if it were not potentially so deeply serious and almost certainly fiercely damaging for so many people all over the UK, Ireland and the rest of the EU.

Might some form of sanity yet prevail? We will see. But the way the stars were aligned after that monumentally misguided 2017 election, only a fool would bet on it.