A fickle business

Watching the UK clown show Parliament lately has been a gut-wrenchingly frustrating experience. It seems that MPs are consistently able to decide on what options they want to reject for Brexit but can't agree on a way forward, to say nothing of May's supreme lack of shame at repeatedly calling for yet another meaningful vote. How you can possibly have multiple "meaningful" votes on the same damn issue I have no idea. There's a supreme irony, apparently completely lost on the mad old bat, in her insisting on voting until we get the right answer whereas the marginal result of the original referendum is apparently utterly beyond question. I don't get it.

The recent series of votes made me wonder just how fickle MPs really are. It's theoretically possible to have voted against May's deal, against No Deal, and against an extension. Anyone who did that would presumably have a miracle solution that could be implemented before March 29th... so does such a person exist ? Are MPs just being bloody-minded or is there some method in their madness ?

To answer this, I downloaded the voting records from the recent bills and amendments. It was a bit difficult to find what I wanted on the official Parliament website but fortunately this one is quite a lot easier (later I found an official one here, saving for later use). So I downloaded the voting records for three bills and a selection of their amendments, as follows :

1. The 12th March vote on leaving the EU according to May's proposed deal. This was previously rejected on 15th January by the biggest margin in history of 230 votes. Since then, May worked tirelessly and fruitlessly to acquire nothing but token "changes" from the EU, which is why it was again defeated by a massive 149 votes.
2. The 13th March "no deal" vote. This one is a bit complicated because it was substantially amended, though you could be forgiven for missing this from the raw text. Originally it was verbally stated that if the bill was rejected, we would be actively choosing to leave the EU with no deal - though this is not clear from the wording itself. It was then amended in such a way that it was popularly said to be ruling out leaving without a deal at any time under any circumstances. Again, this is not explicit in the text. It was also not legally binding and the government ended up reversing its decision to hold a free vote, instructing MPs to vote against its own amended bill. Strange times indeed ! I also downloaded data for the failed Malthouse compromise amendment, which would have been a weird sort of "managed no deal".
3. The 14th March extension bill. This means we'll have a third meaningful vote on May's deal on 20th March. If that vote passes, we'll ask the EU for a short extension until June 30th to sort things out (somehow). If it fails we'll be looking at a much longer extension to decide on another course of action. I also downloaded data for two amendments (both failed) : an extension of Article 50 for the House to take control of Brexit and a proposal for a second referendum. Most MPs abstained from the latter as it was felt (including by leaders of the People's Vote campaign) that it was more urgent to secure an extension than tack on a new public vote. There were other amendments to this bill but I didn't consider them as they were very similar.

I would also note that when MPs vote on amendments, they are really just voting on the wording of a bill. They still have to ratify the amended bill if the amendment is accepted - it's theoretically possible they could vote for an amendment but not ratify it. MPs might also choose to vote against an amendment if they don't think it has any chance of currently winning the actual vote, e.g. in this case the second referendum amendment. So we have to be cautious of taking the statistical results too literally.

The idea of leaving without a deal was hitherto not at all popular in Parliament so one may wonder why the vote to rule it out wasn't terribly decisive at 321 to 278. This is likely because of the wording change and the last-minute whips from the government. Ruling out no deal under any circumstances is a bit different from ruling one out right now - the government may be mistaken but genuinely views the "threat" of no deal as a bargaining chip for whatever reason. Moreover, a vote against this bill would not necessarily have been the active decision to leave without a deal. Since the government has said they don't want to leave without a deal and enforced its MPs to vote against this bill, it's highly unlikely that if it had passed we'd have a No Deal on our hands. So it's important to realise that this bill was not a straightforward Deal or No Deal choice.

With all that in mind, what did I find ? I don't have time to figure out a way to make some nice graphics so I'll cut to the chase. Here are a bunch of numbers from the Brexiteer perspective :

• 304 MPs were against both May's deal and the prospect of No Deal. Of those, all voted in favour of an extension. There were no MPs so fickle as to vote no on everything. No-one appears to have actually voted for the magical unicorn of getting a better deal at the last minute.
• 79 MPs were against both May's deal and the prospect of an extension. These were all in favour of the allowing No Deal to remain possible. They were all Conservatives apart from the ten DUP MPs and three from Labour. 
• A total of 278 MPs voted to allow No Deal to remain an option, while 164 tried to get the Malthouse compromise applied to the extension bill. Oddly, there were 7 MPs who approved of Malthouse but voted against No Deal (recall that Malthouse is a form of managed No Deal so this makes no sense). 121 MPs were in favour of keeping the No Deal option but rejected Malthouse.
• Only 26 MPs (25 Conservative and one Labour, Stephen Hepburn) wanted the No Deal option, did not want an extension and did not want the Malthouse compromise amendment. This would seem to indicate the desire for the hardest of hard Brexits is very small.
• 4 MPs were against May's deal, an extension and Malthouse (three Conservatives and the baffling Stephen Hepburn again). In contrast 64 MPs against May's deal and an extension also wanted Malthouse.
• The DUP voted unanimously against an extension, May's deal,  removing the No Deal option (which is bizarre given how clearly this would treat Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK), against a second referendum, against Parliament controlling Brexit, and in favour of Malthouse.

With the caveats discussed above, and remembering how quick and dirty this is (I see no point spending too long on it because it will all soon be obsolete), it seems fair to conclude that May was right to be worried about the strongly pro-Brexit faction in the Tories. True, the appetite for a "let's get the hell out RIGHT NOW" option is negligible. But the idea of a managed No Deal appears to be taken quite seriously by a large fraction of the Tory party. It's hard to say if the part would split if May hadn't tried to appease them, but they're clearly a group she can't ignore - they are simply too large. Putting party before country she may well be, but if she'd lost complete control, who's to say we'd have been any better off ? The pro-Brexit Tory faction may be so large as to make a shitstorm all but inevitable, once a referendum was called.

Next we should turn to those more opposed to Brexit. We have less data to go on here since fewer options have been presented.

• Of the 391 MPs opposed to May's deal, 302 were in favour of removing the No Deal option entirely. Only 8 MPs who supported May's deal wanted to kill the prospect of No Deal.
• 297 were opposed to May's deal and wanted Parliament to take control. 3 were, weirdly, in favour of May's deal but also wanted Parliament to take control.
• 84 MPs who wanted a second referendum amendment (but remember, most abstained from voting as it was seen to be the wrong time, so the true number is likely significantly higher). All were, unsurprisingly, against May's deal. They were also all in favour of Parliament taking control and of granting an extension. None wanted to keep the No Deal option or explore the Malthouse compromise. All were opposition members.
• Of the opposition MPs, 7 voted for May's deal, 5 for Malthouse, 3 for retaining the No Deal option, 4 against Parliament taking control, and 4 against an extension. This would seem to suggest a very strong opposition to Brexit, at least for the options presented. However, 22 of them (18 Labour) voted against a second referendum option despite being instructed to abstain.

All in all, there are not that many MPs who are truly fickle. The bigger problem seems to be what they've been allowed to vote rather than their consistency : no-one is making a choice because no-one is being offered anything substantially different (though no-one is presenting much of an alternative either). Once options are presented, MPs appear to be consistent with only a few perplexing oddities.

The Tories appear to be split only on what form of Brexit to take rather than whether to take it at all (with a few notable exceptions like Ken Clarke). While the numbers here may disguise support for Remain, there's been little in the way of practical efforts to actually do anything. The opposition are quite clearly more united against Brexit than the Tories. But they too are split on how to proceed; how much is unclear. Even if they could unite around a strategy, it's hard to see them persuading enough Tories to rebel to support it.

A week is indeed a long time in politics. On the other hand, the three basic options - May's deal, no deal or no Brexit - crystallised months ago, and no-one's done anything to allow a truly meaningful vote.