Here we go again

Despite having voted Remain and not regarding a "No deal" Brexit as either the best option for Britain or required by the referendum, I wasn't impressed by the Cooper amendment passed in the House of Commons which was presented as a vote against leaving the EU without a deal.

I'm afraid I regard this vote as a pointless exercise in virtue signalling.

It doesn't do anything about the fact that if MPs can't agree on anything else, we automatically leave the EU without a deal.

What it does is require that if there actually is a "No deal" Brexit, the provisions which have already been put into law enabling the government to spend money to mitigate the effects can only be put into effect it parliament approves them.

If the MPs who voted for this intended the government to take it as a serious threat, I agree with various people on Twitter such as Robert Colvile ‏(@rcolvile) who wrote that

"The logic is essentially

‘We disapprove of fires, so we’re banning sprinkler systems to make everyone think really carefully about using matches’"

But do these MPs really expect anyone to believe that if a "No Deal" Brexit had already taken place they would deliberately vote to make it more damaging to prove a point?

MPs have voted for an awful lot of things in the recent past which I thought were pretty stupid - the Cooper amendment itself being a case in point - but I don't believe they are that stupid.

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