Robert Peston is close to some ministers, including cabinet ministers, so I always read what he has to say with interest. His item on the ITV News website (HERE) on Saturday is slightly worrying for anyone concerned about cabinet government or parliamentary democracy. The prime minister's appearance on Andrew Marr's progamme on Sunday didn't help us to understand what is likely to happen when her deal is voted down - as it surely will be.
Marr asked what will happen when the deal is rejected, she actually said nobody can say - to which he replied, "You could". She didn't respond, but readers of Peston's piece the day before will not have been surprised.
This is what he wrote on Saturday:
This is what he wrote on Saturday:
"Because her strategy is to persuade MPs to back her version of
leaving the EU in a vote on 15 or 16 January, and in the words of one of
her senior ministers: "I will be shot for telling you this but we are
going to lose that vote."
"So what then?
"Well, amazingly, no one around her - not her ministers, not her officials - seem to know.
"Why not?
"She won’t tell us," says a minister".
So we are not alone in not knowing what Plan B is. Perhaps even the PM doesn't know herself.
It seems to me quite shocking that the future of the nation and its 65 million people is locked inside the mind of a single almost sociopathic loner. Phillip May, her husband, probably knows more about where we are headed than either her advisors, members of the cabinet, the cabinet secretary or senior officials. She is a complete blank. The entire machinery of government is waiting to learn what Plan B is.
One minister who Peston has spoken to said:
"We go to see her. We give her our ideas about what to do next. She
listens politely. She even asks questions. But none of us have a clue
whether she agrees, whether she is persuaded. She gives us no hints. It
is quite remarkable."
Peston has also now learned (HERE) that the EU are not about to offer Mrs May any legally binding text which will change anyone's mind in parliament or in the UK making it even more of a certainty the deal will not be ratified. He says:
"Since the Prime Minister knows [the EU are not going to offer her anything more ] why on earth is she apparently wasting her time promoting the conceit that the EU is about to draft new words on the backstop that would rescue her Brexit plan?
“None of us really know” said a Cabinet minister.
“We assume she is running down the clock to make it even harder for Parliament to come up with an alternative.
"But we are observers, bystanders. We don’t really know”.
"A Brexit that was supposed to be all about taking back control has paralysed the political system and turned senior ministers into bystanders as the country faces its moment of destiny-shaping Brexit truth".
The 'bloody difficult woman' has turned out to be - well, a bloody difficult woman. We are now in her hands.
