For a long time, as many of you know, I was certain that May wouldn’t allow no deal Brexit to happen. Now, I don’t know. Perhaps parliament will figure out a way to stop it, if that’s what it comes to, but even that I have no strong confidence in. I’m not saying no deal Brexit will now happen, just that for a long time I thought it was pretty much impossible. We have come to a point where I have to admit that I really don’t know.
What Theresa May is doing now has no internal logic to it. A second referendum is something that probably has just enough votes to carry her deal through parliament, as I’ve demonstrated previously. It could be the one way to get her deal through the House pretty much as is, with no need to beg the EU for concessions she must know they won’t give, or even bend to what anyone in her party or the Labour Party wants that isn’t already in the agreement. But no, we are told – she can’t do that because it would split the Conservative party. Except that both no deal Brexit and delaying Brexit if no deal can be reached both have more potential to split the Tories than another EU referendum does. In fact, keeping no deal on the table and continuing to lend credence to the fact that it could possibly happen still, this close to March 29th, is doing her party a world of harm, as the factions on either side get more and more entrenched in their respective positions. All so she can supposedly get her deal through – which if she somehow miraculously succeeds, will probably split her party anyhow, or at the very least end her government, since the DUP will then very possibly withdraw support for it. The Prime Minister is threatening to drive the car into the wall in order to avoid driving the car into the wall.
Weirdly, the prime minster that May is starting to resemble most of all is David Cameron, the guy she was so keen to be anything but like. She lives moment to moment with absolutely no strategic sense of where she is headed or where she wants to eventually end up. All I can say is, we know how that ended for him.
“She lives moment to moment with absolutely no strategic sense of where she is headed or where she wants to eventually end up.”
I think this is a fair assessment. It does mean that what she does or rather is doing, is to to get to the next moment. This means that if her Party does not split within the next few days, that is enough for her. This is the internal logic
The fact that we know that at some point, possibly sooner rather than later, she will step down.
We may have jumped from the high flying jet, the parachute might be an unworkable mess, but May will make her excuses and leave (Cameron style) before the moment to pull the rip cord.
I do not think there is any point in trying to claim that Corbyn is worse than May: why quibble over insignificant differences?