May’s crushing loss is proof Brexit has failed
With 72 days to go before Brexit, the country is stockpiling food and medicine. Immigrants are in limbo. Troops are on standby
“Defeat” is too small a word for the rebuke Britain’s parliament handed Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday. Her Brexit deal, laboriously negotiated over many months, was voted down on Tuesday by a massive 230 votes — a far bigger margin than expected, and the worst loss of any British government in modern times. Yet if this brutal rejection has caused May to think again, she didn’t let on. She promised talks, meetings and yet more conferring with the EU. It’s as though she thinks she can extract some ornamental changes to the bargain and get the House of Commons to come around to her way of thinking. In this, she is almost certainly wrong. Parliament rejected the deal with good reason: leaving on May’s terms would have made the country poorer for a generation. It would’ve inhibited its independence, clobbered its businesses, and battered its public finances, while solving no problems and settling no questions. No amount of semantic reshuffling can salvage it. May’s next immediate ...
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