The only sure thing this week is that there will be a summit of EU leaders in Strasbourg on Thursday and Friday. Beyond that nothing is certain but the possibilities are endless. May's deal could be ratified in time for the summit. She might step down or be forced out. She will almost certainly have to ask for a delay, either a long or a short one. She could take Macron and Merkel hostage at gunpoint while demanding a trade deal in exchange for their safe return. We just don't know.
BuzzFeed were reporting last night (HERE) that about half of the 75 Tory MPs who voted against the deal at MV2 will switch but a hardcore of about 40 will only support the PM if she promises to resign by April so that a new PM might lead the second phase of the negotiations. The announcement of her decision to resign would have to be made at the despatch box they say, trust in her has sunk that low. After two years of putting party before country, the party has turned on her and is insisting she puts the deal (the one they all hate) before herself, the party and the country.
If she does go, we could be in the bizarre position of getting a deal ratified which has the wholehearted support of just one MP, Theresa May, and with parliament never having expressed a collective view on our future relationship with the EU. What a way to run a country. But don't worry it isn't going to happen.
I don't believe she will step down at all. It would be a humiliation too far even for Theresa May. Besides, there is no guarantee that if she did agree to go, and with the entire ERG and the DUP on board, the deal will pass. Some die hard remainers could scupper it and they have much more incentive now they know a long delay is on the cards.
In the highly unlikely event she does go, it will lead to a lot of blood letting in the Tory party just as the local council elections are under way. Plus the new leader will fare no better and will simply take on the same poisoned chalice and will be gone in a couple of years just like Mrs May. And if she steps down Brexit will have taken three Secretaries of State and two Prime Ministers in order to force through a deal that nobody likes. Brexit is eating it's own offspring just as Sir Ivan Rogers warned.
Speaking of new leaders, one of the potentials to take over (OMG!), Boris Johnson, while urging his supporters to vote against the deal, says (HERE) it's not too late to get real change to the backstop, thus inadvertently revealing his own negotiating strategy is remarkably like Theresa May's. This is to ignore everything the other side say and simply keep repeating your own demands. If he ever gets to be PM he will come to the same sticky end.
Chancellor Phillip Hammond confirmed yesterday that MV3 will only take place this week if the government is confident of getting it through. I really do not see how she can have any confidence and therefore I don't think we will even see MV3 this week at all.
Theresa May has (I am told) uttered the phrase 'no deal is better than a bad deal' in parliament more than 80 times but is poised on the edge of having to admit that actually a bad deal is better than no deal. I am grateful to Colm McCarthy at the Irish Independent for putting it this way. It seems to take an Irishman to strike the Brexit nail square on the head.
McCarthy begins his latest article (HERE - or HERE no£) on Brexit with this: "A bad deal is better than no deal after all. Who could have guessed? It has taken Mrs May and her colleagues 33 months to arrive at a conclusion so obvious that the crash-out possibility made its debut only after the 2016 vote, as a threat to frighten the EU-27. Its abandonment was marked appropriately when the Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay voted against the government motion which he had commended to the House of Commons a few hours earlier. And kept his job".
He also describes the DUP as "the UK's only coin-operated political party" in reference to the news that their support for May's deal is about to cost us another £1 billion.
This is the deal now being described as the worst in history and certainly worse than the one we've got now. Polling shows when people are offered the choice of remaining, leaving with no deal or leaving with Mrs May's deal, it comes last. Remaining is the most popular. It is clearly a bad deal but the prime minister, in a phenomenal change of tune, is now adamant it is better than no deal - otherwise, why keep presenting it to parliament?
The BBC's Katya Adler this morning was saying on Radio 4 that the EU27 are split on whether to extend Article 50 or not. They do not want the uncertainty to continue for another year or more. I suppose it isn't entirely out of the question that they give Theresa May an ultimatum - please make a decision, stay in or go. Personally, I wish they would force the issue.
The People's Vote march still to come on Saturday in London. Can't wait to show Farage and Tice what a real protest looks like compared to the hundred people (HERE) walking from Sunderland to Parliament Square. The organisers say the Brexit betrayal march is limited to 100 people for health and safety reasons - is that another EU directive? And they seem to have a bus - what's that doing?
