Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was "playing political games" when he called for a vote of no confidence in UK Prime Minister Theresa May rather than a more impactful motion of no-confidence in the government, Graham Eardley, a spokesman for the Bruges Group think tank, told Sputnik.
LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th December, 2018) Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was "playing political games" when he called for a vote of no confidence in UK Prime Minister Theresa May rather than a more impactful motion of no-confidence in the government, Graham Eardley, a spokesman for the Bruges Group think tank, told Sputnik.Corbyn lodged a motion of no confidence in the prime minister on Monday, shortly after May said a Commons vote on a Brexit deal would take place in the third week of January. Last week, May delayed the vote, originally scheduled for December 11, as it seemed unlikely to pass Commons.
"The call for a no confidence vote in the Prime Minister is not the same as a call of no confidence in the government, so it's just [Corbyn] playing political games. If he had any guts, he'd call for a no confidence vote in the government that has legal force and the government would have to make legal time for. Instead, when it's directed against the Prime Minister alone, the government doesn't have to make any time for it and can just dismiss it," Eardley said.
The Downing Street has, in fact, refused to allow time for the discussion of this motion, calling it a "stunt." Nigel Dodds, the deputy leader of Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) backing May's Conservatives, said that his party would not support the motion, describing it as "parliamentary antics" and "play-acting."
Paul Murphy, a member of the Irish Parliament for the Dublin South-West constituency, believes that a general election is the solution to the current uncertainty over a Brexit deal.
"For me, from here, the answer is a general election and for a Corbyn government to negotiate a different kind of Brexit. There's a huge responsibility on Corbyn to give a clear voice on that," Murphy told Sputnik last week, when the UK parliament was angered by May's delay of the Brexit deal vote.
At that time, a number of opposition parties pledged to back Labour if it launched a motion of no confidence in the government.
However, Murphy admitted that a no confidence vote could fail, "so the only option after that would have been to go for a second referendum, which would be extremely dangerous no matter what the result."
Eardley argued that a potential referendum should respect the already established decision of the electorate to leave the European Union, with any further vote giving the public a choice between the prime minister's deal or reverting back to standard World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations.
May has repeatedly ruled out a second referendum. At the same time, her government agreed in a meeting earlier on Tuesday to step up preparations for a no deal Brexit.
The withdrawal agreement was endorsed by the European Union on November 25, but UK lawmakers met it with strong criticism over the Irish border backstop, in particular. The attorney general's legal advice released by the government reluctantly in early December confirmed the lawmakers' fears that the United Kingdom risked being trapped in the backstop.
May delayed the vote pledging to secure new guarantees from her EU colleagues. However, the European Union made it clear there would be no renegotiation of the deal. President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker allowed only for the possibility of "further clarifications."
