Brexit: MPs reject all options in second round of indicative votes – as it happened

That’s all from us this evening, so here’s a summary of the latest events:

• MPs have once again rejected each of the alternative Brexit plans. All four of the proposals brought to the Commons on Monday evening failed to gain a majority.
• The cabinet will meet on Tuesday morning to discuss the way forward, with the Brexit secretary warning that the UK is hurtling towards a no-deal scenario. The European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, said a hard Brexit was becoming “nearly inevitable”.
• The prospect of a general election also loomed larger, with one Downing Street adviser saying it was being discussed. The aide said the idea of May leading the Tories into a snap election being “tested” and was viewed by some as “the least worst option”.
• The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, demanded that Parliament be given a further chance, claiming a solution was near. Various second referendum-supporting MPs claimed they were the single best supported group in the Commons.
• After the refusal of his party colleagues to back his compromise, the Tory MP, Nick Boles, said he would no longer take the whip. In an emotional speech shortly after learning the result of the indicative votes, Boles said the Conservatives had refused to compromise.

If you’d like to read a little more, my colleagues Heather Stewart, Jessica Elgot and Rowena Mason have the full story:

These tweets from my colleague, Jessica Elgot, paint a picture of a Parliament united only in acrimony this evening:

Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, will hold Brexit talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Tuesday. The bilateral meeting in Paris comes ahead of talks between Varadkar and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who is due to visit Dublin on Thursday.

A spokesman for the Irish government has said the meetings were a demonstration of strong and unwavering EU solidarity with Ireland over Brexit:

The Taoiseach and President Macron will take stock of the latest developments in Westminster, and discuss the scenarios which may arise, including the possibility of a request for an extension, or ratification of the withdrawal agreement, in advance of the extraordinary meeting of the European Council on 10 April.

Earlier, we brought you brief summaries of the responses of both the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay (see: 10.08pm), and the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn (see: 10.09pm). Here are their full statements:

In a point of order, Barclay told the Commons:

This is the second time the House has considered a wide variety of options for a way forward, it has once again failed to find clear majority for any of the options. And yet, the result of the House’s decision on Friday not to endorse the withdrawal agreement means that the default legal position is that the UK will leave the EU in just 11 days’ time.

To secure any further extension, the government will have to put forward a credible proposition to the EU as to what we will do with that extra time. This House has continuously rejected leaving without a deal, just as it has rejected not leaving at all. Therefore, the only option is to find a way through which allows the UK to leave with a deal.

The government continues to believe that the best course of action is to do so as soon as possible. If the House were to agree a deal this week it may still be possible to avoid holding European Parliamentary elections.

Mr Speaker, cabinet will meet in the morning to consider the results of tonight’s votes and how we should proceed.

Corbyn said:

On a point of order, it is disappointing that no solution has won a majority this evening but I remind the House that the prime minister’s unacceptable deal has been overwhelmingly rejected three times.

The margin of defeat for one of the options tonight was very narrow indeed and the prime minister’s deal has been rejected by very large majorities on three occasions.

If it is good enough for the prime minister to have three chances at her deal, then I suggest that possibly the House should have a chance to consider again the options that we had before us today, in a debate on Wednesday, so that the House can succeed where the prime minister has failed; in presenting a credible economic relationship with Europe for the future that prevents us crashing out with no deal.

Some reaction from the business world: The national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, Mike Cherry, denounces this evening’s votes as “yet another failure of our political process”.

Many small businesses will be thoroughly exasperated at yet another day of total stalemate. You couldn’t run a business like this.

We will look to tomorrow’s cabinet meeting to see leadership in coming up with realistic and swift plans to find a resolution that can win a majority in the House of Commons and agreement from the EU.

A last-minute, unplanned no-deal exit on 12 April must be avoided. But prolonged uncertainty will leave the UK’s millions of small firms unable to plan, invest or grow. Those who have managed the expense and resources of planning contingencies face mounting costs the longer this chaos continues.

The Westminster leader of the SNP, Ian Blackford, shares Cherry’s anger with Labour, saying a second EU referendum must now be the priority.

The SNP’s priority is to stop the Brexit chaos and the catastrophic consequences it will have on Scotland and the UK’s economy, jobs and living standards.

The public vote motion received the biggest number of votes in favour in Parliament and it is now clear that the only way to break the Brexit impasse is by bringing this back to the people – with remain on the ballot paper.

It is also welcome to see growing support across the parties for the SNP’s motion to revoke article 50 to avoid a no-deal Brexit outcome. However, the decision of the Labour leadership not to support the motion is unforgivable and a damning indictment of the party.

Given everything we now know, the best way forward to break the Brexit impasse is to put the decision back to the people in a second EU referendum – and both a referendum and revoking Article 50 must be part of the next steps in this process.

People in Scotland have been ignored throughout the Brexit process. Any pretence that Scotland is treated as an equal partner in the UK has gone out the window. Whatever happens now it is clear that the only way to properly protect Scotland’s interests is with independence.

Liz Saville Roberts, Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader, is another to direct her rhetorical fire at the Labour frontbench and is backing the revocation of article 50 if a no-deal Brexit appears inevitable

The broken Westminster system is continuing to fail the people it’s meant to represent. With 11 days before we crash out of the EU, MPs must now realise we need the safety net of cancelling Brexit.

By forcing their MPs to vote against the article 50 revocation ‘safety net’, the Labour party helped the Tories increase the chances of a disastrous ‘no deal’ exit. They must now realise the error of their ways and help us put in place the insurance policy of stopping Brexit altogether if, in the next few days, a ‘no deal’ exit looks inevitable.

I also must express my disappointment with the 24 Labour MPs who voted against a People’s Vote. They made the difference, they stopped a People’s Vote being delivered tonight. If they had backed it, as is supposedly their party’s policy, we would be looking at a very different route forward.

Instead, it looks like we are confined to repeating this process again, as the broken politics of Westminster continues to deliver disappointment for all.

The SNP MP, Joanna Cherry, whose amendment to revoke article 50 came bottom of the table, said she would now move away from trying to fix UK issues and focus on Scotland. Expressing fury with Labour for whipping against her option she has said:

I don’t know why they whipped against because when I spoke to Keir Starmer he was unable to give any kind of coherent explanation. I know many people suspect it’s because because Labour couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a motion in the name of someone from the SNP.

Labour has put a dreadful, incompetent, hopeless Tory government in a stronger position. From now on, my principal focus will be on how best to protect Scotland from this chaos.

Earlier, the People’s Vote campaigner, Bridget Phillipson, was making the point that a confirmatory vote was the best supported option (see: 11.09pm). Her colleague, Chuka Umunna, goes yet further:

The logical thing in this circumstance would be to put the prospect of leaving the EU with a customs union to the British people in a People’s Vote with the option to remain.

At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be support in the House for a general election because it won’t resolve any of the Brexit chaos, it just delays making a decision.

And the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable, agrees with both of them, saying:

While none of the propositions passed this evening, Parliament has again given a clear steer on the direction we should take. 280 MPs, 12 more than last week, voted for a People’s Vote.

In the absence of an alternative consensus option, the prime minister should now move to put her withdrawal agreement to the public, with the option to remain in the EU. This has the best chance of commanding a majority, combining those who favour the deal, with those who favour a referendum.

A fourth meaningful vote without a referendum attached will be a meaningless and fruitless exercise.

The EU has ruled it out over and over again but the former Brexit minister and deputy chairman of the hard Brexit-supporting European Research Group, Steve Baker, is saying the prime minister should go back to Brussels to renegotiate the deal. He has told the BBC’s Newsnight programme:

When the Cabinet meet tomorrow they have got some very hard choices to make. They face the choice between no deal and no Brexit, unless they can go to this forthcoming European Council and table the legal text with the kind of changes which I and others have been setting out.

He says those changes would include replacing the backstop with “alternative arrangements”, limiting the length of the implementation period and removing references to the formation of a single customs territory.

If the EU won’t move then it will be necessary to move out of the EU with no withdrawal agreement.

The former foreign office minister, Alistair Burt, says Theresa May would not allow a no-deal Brexit to take place. He has said:

The prime minister has made it very clear on a number of occasions she is very concerned about a no deal. She’s said that for no deal to happen we would have to have express consent in the House of Commons.

I hope we don’t have a general election because I don’t see what a general election would do to resolve the situation, it leaves the decisions that still have to be made until after the election.

Of course, May’s stated position has also been that “no deal” would be better than a “bad deal”.

The Labour MP, Stephen Kinnock, who tabled the common market 2.0 option alongside Nick Boles and others, says MPs have taken a step towards no deal.

It’s very messy. I just wish we could come up with something that could win tonight. The common market has picked up a lot of support and I think we have definitely taken a step towards no deal.

In the end, it comes down to the prime minister: I think she has to drop her red lines and move towards the single market and customs union because she knows that with these numbers she’s easily over the line.

The Tory MP and former attorney general, Dominic Grieve, is unperturbed by the second failure to find an alternative path that MPs can support.

It may appear tedious but I always thought when we started this process it was going to take several goes to get there. Now we need to start talks about whether some of these concepts can be merged.

It’s obvious there’s a preferred route by Parliament for a customs union and some form of regulatory alignment ... and a large number for holding a referendum. That’s the way forward, but if we’re going to get there that’s going to require those promoting a customs union to vote for a referendum and vice versa.

The prime minister’s deal has no special magic over and above the rest – the awful, difficult truth is her deal has commanded less support than the deals we have been looking at this evening.

Bridget Phillipson, the Labour MP who campaigns with the People’s Vote campaign, says that, while it could not gain a majority, a confirmatory vote was the best supported of the options presented to the Commons.

Parliament has also briefly examined whether alternative Brexit options might be better than the one the prime minister has so often proposed. Although there are merits in both a customs union and a Norway-style deal, both would be very far from what was promised in 2016.

We now need a longer extension to the article 50 process, so that we can kick the tyres of these proposals properly, as well as ensure any proposal carries the support of all those MPs like myself who want the public to have the final say.

It would be a mistake for Parliament to impose any deal on the people, now that we know it cannot meet the expectations raised for Brexit. As such, a confirmatory referendum should not be judged as one option jostling for support in this crisis, but as a sensible compromise solution to this crisis.