Watching from the opposite side of the world it is hard to imagine how badly the Conservative Party has handled it.
I mean we are days away from the end and the UK now relies on the whim of shifting temporary alliances to determine how it will finish.
Theresa May is finished. No matter what happens her days as leader are limited. I suspect she is counting them down.
Her position is that tenuous she is offering to resign if her negotiated deal passes. Who knows what she will do if it fails.
And it shows how compromised the tory party is, successors will change their earlier position opposing a soft Brexit because their prospects of attaining the top job will increase if a soft Brexit occurs.
The Guardian in this editorial puts the case in more gentle language:
There is not much logic in supporting a plan on the condition that the one person who thinks it a good plan resigns – except in the Conservative party. In a bid to win hardline Eurosceptic support for her Brexit deal, Theresa May has signalled that she will stand down before the next phase of negotiations with the EU begins.
The prime minister’s calculation is that the most zealous Brexiters will only support her in a third meaningful vote if they think there will be a leadership race soon afterwards. That way, Mrs May might get a legacy of sorts and the hardliners would have a chance to install one of their own in Downing Street. But nothing about this bargain would serve the wider interests of the country. The deal itself is unchanged. The prospect of a different Tory leader would not fix its deficiencies and its opponents would not really have changed their minds. Their support would be dishonest, given only with the intention of reneging on commitments made by Mrs May in the Commons and in Brussels. And since the DUP is still withholding support, a third meaningful vote looks futile in any event.
As an indication of how broken the system is the successors look like they may be one of Michael Gove, Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg.
And the DUP is holding out and says it will not support May’s deal. It is very ironic that Northern Ireland should be the reason that the UK is facing such a crisis. That hard border that Brexit will require is going to cause havoc in Northern Ireland.
Yesterday Parliament voted on a number of different options and voted them all down.
The BBC reported that the rejected options included:
Maybe the UK Parliament is engaging in a huge amount of brinkmanship with the intent of getting a better deal out of Europe, maybe not.
The EU has set a deadline of April 12, and has said that a further extension beyond 12 April is only possible if the UK agrees to hold European elections on 23 May. The Conservatives are opposed to this.
The United Kingdom appears to be blundering towards a hard brexit with the prospect of May’s head on a stake being the only thing that may avert this.
Interesting times …
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