Valentine’s Day votes: what will happen in Parliament on Thursday?

Theresa May will issue a plea for MPs to grant her two more weeks to improve her Brexit deal during an address to the House of Commons this afternoon.

The prime minister will say that negotiations are still ongoing, following her trips to Brussels, Dublin and Belfast in recent days - and will ask Parliament not to tie her hands in this Thursday’s round of amendment votes.

MPs had been gearing up for a “Valentine’s Day showdown”, but in a bid to win May more time to hammer out a compromise, Downing Street “is promising another opportunity to table amendments on 27 February”, says The Independent.

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The PM will put forward an amendable motion this afternoon asking Parliament to authorise the new delay, after which MPs will have another 36 hours to table amendments that will be put to a vote on Valentine’s Day.

What will happen on Thursday?

As things stand, “there are no knife-edge amendments on the table that would make for exciting votes on Thursday”, according to Politico’s Jack Blanchard. He says the expectation is that May “will indeed be granted her stay of execution this week, so long as she gives a firm and binding commitment that MPs will definitely get their say in the final week of February”.

But the “key people to watch” are the “tranche of Remain-supporting Tory ministers who have repeatedly threatened to resign in order to back Labour MP Yvette Cooper and Tory MP Nick Boles’ amendment to force the UK to request an Article 50 extension”, Blanchard adds.

The Tory rebels are warning that they will act at the end of February if May has not secured a Brexit deal. “This doesn’t feel like the right time,” one pro-European Cabinet minister told the Financial Times.

But another insider source told The Times that this does not mean they’ve “bottled it”. The source claims that between ten and 20 ministers will quit the Government to back the Cooper/Boles plan if no progress has been made by the end of this month.

The Cabinet Remainer told the newspaper: “What makes me mad is the idea that she [May] would quite like to delay, but doesn’t want to admit it, so wants it done to her in order to keep the ERG [European Research Group] on side. People like me are the sacrificial lambs.”

However, The Sun reports that, in fact, Tory Remainers are planning to table an amendment on Thursday that could see the rapid passing of a new law allowing Parliament to order the Government to ask for an Article 50 extension.

“Just kicking this down the road another two weeks to give us another vote on 27 February is not going to be enough,” an unnamed minister told the newspaper.

Another said: “We want to secure a specific commitment from the PM for parliamentary time to make sure 27 February really is high noon. If we get it, then there will still be time to get the Cooper-Boles Bill Royal Assent by mid-March, so we won’t need to press a vote on it this week.”

What about Labour amendments?

Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said over the weekend that his party would stop the PM “running down the clock” to exit day in March, by drafting an amendment this week to to force her to put her deal before Parliament again by the end of February.

Meanwhile, Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson have said they are poised to table a new amendment for a second referendum. In an article for The Independent, the duo write: “It would also be reckless to accept the Withdrawal Agreement without the approval of the British people.”

But The Times argues that this amendment would be highly unlikely to pass on Thursday. “Supporters believe a second referendum’s time will come, but only once MPs are convinced all other options have been eliminated,” says the newspaper.

So what happens next then?

Judging by the current situation, 27 February “now looks like the PM’s Brexit ‘high noon’, when she must convince MPs either to back her deal or at least stop them taking control of the process”, says Politico’s Blanchard.

Yet there is a growing belief both in Westminster and in Brussels “that there simply won’t be a resolution to these months of indecision until weeks before, maybe even days before we are due to leave”, says the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

“The politics, or as their many critics would have it, No. 10’s mishandling of the politics, have made getting things sorted at a much earlier date just impossible,” she adds.