Basic Maths Failure

There is a special kind of political myth that survives only because repeating it is easier than thinking, and I'm seeing it repeated ad nauseam on social media. The claim that Labour “blocked Brexit” while the Conservatives held a majority is one of its finest specimens.

The latest exhibit is a meme brandished as proof: 243 Labour MPs voted against the EU Withdrawal Bill in January 2018, supposedly “blocking a smooth Brexit”. The fact is true. The conclusion is nonsense. What's often conveniently miss is on that particular report-stage vote, virtually all Conservative MPs (and others supporting the Government’s position) voted against the amendment too, not against the bill overall.

In January 2018 the government had no settled Brexit plan. None. No agreed future relationship, no answer to the Irish border, and no clarity on whether it wanted Norway, Canada, or something it could not describe at all. The Withdrawal Bill at that stage was a skeletal framework that handed ministers vast delegated powers while postponing every substantive choice. Oppositions oppose badly drafted, incoherent legislation. That is not obstruction. It is their job.

More importantly, a vote against a bill at one stage does not “block” anything if the government can command a majority. Bills go through multiple stages. Governments amend, re-table, and ultimately pass them if they have the numbers. If they cannot, the problem is not the opposition. It is their own internal collapse.

And in 2018, the Conservatives did not have a majority. They were propped up by the DUP and at war with themselves. That paralysis was not caused by Labour, the Lords, or Brussels. It was caused by a governing party that could not agree what Brexit even was.

Fast-forward to the moment this excuse should have died. From December 2019 onwards, the Conservatives had an eighty seat majority. Eighty. The sort of majority used to reshape the state without breaking stride. And what happened then? The Withdrawal Agreement passed. The Trade and Cooperation Agreement passed. Brexit was “done”. No Labour votes required. No Lords ambush. No remainer conspiracy.

The Brexit we got is the Brexit the Conservatives chose.

What really infuriates those pushing this myth is not obstruction but scrutiny. Brexit legislation forced its contradictions into the open. You cannot leave the single market and keep frictionless trade. You cannot shout “sovereignty” and then complain when decisions have consequences. When these realities were pointed out, the response was not to resolve them, but to cry betrayal.

There is also a delicious irony at work. The same people who insist Labour blocked Brexit also insist the Conservatives were too weak to deliver it properly. A party with full control of government, the Commons timetable, and later an enormous majority was somehow thwarted by the opposition. This is not analysis. It is magical thinking.

Blaming Labour for the failures of Conservative governments is not just dishonest. It is an insult to basic reasoning. And if someone genuinely believes that an opposition vote in 2018 overrode a government with an eighty seat majority in 2019, then the problem is no longer Brexit.

It is that they do not understand how Parliament works, how legislation works, or what actually caused Brexit to unravel.