The European Research Group is often described as a party within a party. But it also suffers from fractiousness
must be tired from all of the exertion. On March 29th the British prime minister failed once again to corral enough members of Parliament to pass the withdrawal agreement she had negotiated with the EU.
The Conservatives are split into two broad blocs: one, a group of Tories who support their leader’s proposed deal; and another, primarily led by the Eurosceptic European Research Group , that opposes it for being too soft of a Brexit. But Mrs May’s troubles extend beyond this schism. Even among Conservative MPs who supported her deal in the “meaningful vote” in March, there was wide disagreement when they were given a free vote on March 27th on which form of Brexit to adopt, if any.
has run a statistical analysis on the 13 different votes—including two meaningful votes, eight indicative votes and a vote on March 29th on just part of Mrs May’s deal. This found that the Tories are fractured into as many as 15 different clusters, whereas the Labour Party and other opposition groups are much more compact., generates the scores by compressing each of the 13 different votes into a smaller number of scores, generated by an algorithm, that seek to predict MPs’ voting behaviour.
Although the ERG is often described as a party within a party, it also suffers from fractiousness. Some ERG hardliners, such as Steven Baker, opposed Mrs May’s deal at every turn. Others came around to supporting her in the second vote or the third . Excluding members of the cabinet, who did not take part in the indicative votes, Mrs May can count on the support of only 11 ultra-loyalists among more than 600 MPs.
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