Humiliating Rejexit: Theresa May, Brexit crash and burn in unprecedented Parliamentary defeat
Theresa May has sustained the heaviest parliamentary defeat of any British prime minister in the democratic era after MPs rejected her Brexit deal by a resounding majority of 230.
The prime minister immediately announced that she would welcome a vote of no confidence in her own government, and would make time for it on Wednesday.
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, quickly confirmed he had tabled the motion, with the support of the leaders of all the other opposition parties.
Corbyn told MPs: “This is a catastrophic defeat. The house has delivered its verdict on her deal. Delay and denial has reached the end of the line.”
May said that if she survived the vote – which appeared likely, after the Democratic Unionist party said it would back her – she would hold cross-party meetings with senior parliamentarians “to identify what would be required to secure the backing of the house”.
Daily Beast:
It was even worse than expected for the British Prime Minister, whose Brexit deal suffered the worst defeat any prime minister has ever seen in the House of Commons. … [T]his vote was the big one—it had been named the “meaningful vote”—and the result has proved once and for all she cannot carry out the one job she was placed in power to do. With her deal so overwhelmingly defeated, May has failed, and the U.K. has edged to precipice of crashing out of the EU with no deal in place.
One Conservative MP admitted to The Daily Beast: “Honestly, not a f***ing clue what happens next.”
Here’s what happens next: Vladimir Putin, who was also defeated by this Parliament vote, is going to have to rethink his strategy of breaking up Western alliances.