As we prepare later today for another parliamentary episode in the long Brexit saga when there will be more debate, more muddle and more votes which may or may not have any impact on the process, I note something that tells us how difficult it is for anyone to forecast what will happen next. We are observers from a great distance and can hardly be expected to know the real truth, and if we did, we would probably be even more appalled than we are. Yet even those much nearer to the action have exactly the same problem.
Robert Peston, a man whose opinion I usually respect, since he seems very close to various senior ministers and opposition figures, is struggling as much as the rest of us to figure out what's going on. On Monday he went through what looked like a series of logical steps (HERE) and concluded leaving with no deal is 'the most likely outcome'. A point on which I thought he was wrong at the time - and now I note, so does he.
Robert Peston, a man whose opinion I usually respect, since he seems very close to various senior ministers and opposition figures, is struggling as much as the rest of us to figure out what's going on. On Monday he went through what looked like a series of logical steps (HERE) and concluded leaving with no deal is 'the most likely outcome'. A point on which I thought he was wrong at the time - and now I note, so does he.
The steps he went through were all perfectly reasonable and even logical on the day, although he didn't consider the ultimate possibility, which, given he thinks there is no majority in parliament for any deal, is perhaps the likeliest of all. That is Theresa May revoking Article 50.
But anyway, by yesterday afternoon, Wednesday, (HERE) he had changed his mind.
His latest conclusions are threefold. Firstly that he has learned:
"There is collaboration between senior Tory backbenchers (the Letwins, Boleses and Soameses) and the more Remainy members of the government (the Rudds, Gaukes, Clarkes and Hamondses) to ensure that on February 27, MPs would vote to start a process that would force the Prime Minister to ask for a delay to Brexit and simultaneously negotiate a framework for the future relationship between the UK and EU that most MPs could support".
"The aim would be to narrow the scope of the so-called Political Declaration on the permanent trading and security links between the UK and EU so that it probably ends up looking much more like the kind of supersoft Brexit that some have styled Common Market 2.0 and is not a million miles from Labour’s Brexit vision.
"And the idea would be to wrap all this up before the European Parliament is dissolved on April 18, so that the UK could actually Brexit shortly after".
Forget the time frame, I think this is hopelessly optimistic but the thrust of the story has brought about a change of opinion, so Peston now claims:
"This is not the only possible outcome of delaying Brexit, but it is the most likely one now".
Note the use of the word 'now'. This was as of 11:37 yesterday morning.
I agree with Peston. I think it is far more likely than leaving without a deal. The 'supersoft' Brexit proposal has the potential to bring moderates in the House together and would probably be acceptable to the EU in some form. And being more realistic it doesn't contain any cake or cherries. It will not however be plain sailing, as Peston also notes:
"But the problem for the pure or ultra Brexiters, [..] is that the cunning plan to delay Brexit would almost certainly deliver what they would see as Brexit in Name Only, and possibly no Brexit at all.
"It would be a betrayal, for them, of the referendum result to which they dedicated their entire souls.
"And for them the evidence of cancerous conspiracy against the One True Brexit goes wider still, in that ITV News' scoop of last night that the PM’s chief Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins expects MPs to be offered a choice in March of a reworked Brexit or a potentially long delay to leaving the EU proves to them (if proof were needed) that Whitehall is in on it too".
Of course some of the more lunatic Brexiteers, those with not even a nodding acquaintance with reality, are bound to create problems but the moderates in parliament considerably outnumber the ERG and their fellow travellers as Peston notes with this remarkable assertion, which is perhaps disturbingly true:
"What is striking of course is that there is an assumption among both proper Brexiters, soft Brexiters and Remainers that the PM is something of a bystander, that the UK’s Brexit fate is no longer in her hands".
"Here is the measure of her powerlessness. One senior Tory, who with other Conservative rebels wants to prevent a no-deal Brexit, said to me the PM should really thank them".
"If parliament passes a law saying she has to ask for a Brexit delay, she is a law-abiding person and she will follow that law," said the MP.
"And perhaps we are doing her a favour, because when she is following a law there is no choice for her."
"What the MP means is that in her duty to enact the will of parliament there would no longer be a conflict of loyalty for her, no more dilemma about whether to back soft-Brexit Tories or the Brexiter ultras of the European Research Group.
"In other words, she would not herself have to make the kind of Brexit decision that could split the Tory party. Of course the Conservative Party could just decide to break itself up of its own accord".
Not only does Peston now think the PM is barely in the loop any more, he also thinks we will leave with a deal, in the softest of soft Brexits and says the splitting of the Conservative party "looks increasingly likely". On his analysis I think he's right. All May's efforts over the past two and a half years to keep party together will have come to nothing.
But by the end of the day, it may all look quite different. Buckle up.
