Theresa May publishes Brexit bill, fury over its tiny word count

The bill that Theresa May has written up to allow her to trigger Article 50 and start Brexit has been met with a sour reception because it’s only eight lines long (133 words total). The ministers promised to make the bill as short as possible so that Parliament wouldn’t be able to nitpick and change certain things during the EU leaving process, but no one expected it to be quite this short.

MPs have five days to debate it

May has only given MPs five days to debate the bill before they have to vote on it, although from the look of it, they’ll only need five minutes. But some Labour MPs are furious. One has asked Jeremy Corbyn to vote against the current timetable so there will be more time for debate. However, Corbyn has promised he won’t “obstruct” Brexit, so he probably won’t do this.

Tim Farron, leader of the Lib Dems, is also outraged at the brevity of the bill, calling it “short and not sweet.” He sarcastically said that “it’s amazing this 133-word bill took David Davis such long time” because at that rate, he’s been writing “five words a day since Brexit.” He is frustrated by the situation because “Take back control was a mantra of the leave campaign,” but the government is too muddled and divided for that to become a reality.

He says that with every party’s motivations being so different (“Labour totally confused over Brexit,” “the Conservatives determined to take us out of Europe and the Single Market at any cost,” “the Liberal Democrats...fighting for full membership of the Single Market”), the Brexit process is becoming a shambles.

A lot of MPs and other readers find it dubious that the 31 March Article 50 deadline is not mentioned, although a statement from the Brexit-specific Department for Exiting the European Union claims this is “normal procedure.”

May didn’t want to put it to a Parliamentary vote

At first, May didn’t want to put invoking Article 50 to start Brexit early to a vote and went right over the MPs’ heads to the Supreme Court, but they ruled that she must first get the approval of Parliament in a vote, so she has begrudgingly put together this practically tweet-sized bill.

Brexit Secretary David Davis hopes that Parliament “will respect the decision taken by the British people and pass the legislation quickly.”