MPs have voted for the bill to go forward, but that doesn’t mean they all back it – or that the saga is ending any time soon
It’s not over. For a few anxious, or jubilant – depending on which tribe you belong to – minutes between 7.15pm and 7.30pm, it seemed as if the Brexit saga might just be on the verge of resolution, after three and a half agonisingly long years. The House of Commons voted to allow Boris Johnson’s withdrawal agreement bill to advance to the next stage, a prize that had eluded Theresa May not once, not twice, but three times.
What’s more, MPs gave it a green light more emphatically than even the most ardent Brexiters had dared hope. While May had been crushed by triple-figure majorities, Johnson won his meaningful vote by 329 to 299 votes, a majority of 30. Put another way, and as if to reflect this divided nation through what have become the defining numbers of the Brexit era, he won by 52% to 48%.