It might be the first defeat for Theresa May’s government about the law that kick-starts the Brexit process by authorising the British Prime Minister to invoke article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The Lords, the second, unelected House of the British Parliament, will vote tonight, and they could say no to May who promised to start divorcing the European Union by the end of March, because they want to be reassured that the rights of the 3 million European citizens who live in the United Kingdom will be protected. This has been confirmed by Lord Alton, the most influential Catholic in the United Kingdom, with a long political career that he began in 1979, when he was just 28. “We will approve the law depending on the reassurances the government can give us, but, among us, Peers of the Kingdom, there is a great wish to understand what status the European citizens who live here will have, before article 50 is invoked. People should not be used as bargaining chips in the negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union”, Alton explains. If the Hereditary Peers are not satisfied with the reassurances provided by the government to protect Europeans in the United Kingdom, they will submit an amendment and the Brexit law might go back to the House of Commons. The House of Lords does not have the power to stop the law, but it can make it very difficult to approve it, by sending it back to the House of Commons, as in a sort of ping pong game, and by deterring or hindering the government’s work.