If there are more than two challengers, a series of votes in the parliamentary party whittles them down to just two. The rank-and-file membership then chooses between those two (unless one of them withdraws, which is how TM got to be party leader).
The ERG claims about 80 members, which is only about a quarter of the parliamentary party, so even if all 80 agree to back the one candidate (and the ERG are not noted for effective co-ordinated action) there is no guarantee that that candidate will be among the top two.
But, yeah, of the two candidates whose names go to the rank-and-file membership, the received wisdom is that the more Brexity of the two will be the favourite.
“I think it’s offensive to the will of the Conservative party that MPs are suggesting they go back on May and vote again. They selected her, why are they so appallingly undemocratic as to suggest that when they said May, they didn’t want to fully commit to her?”
That’s her normal expression these days. If she survives the no-confidence vote - and I expect she will - under her party rules she’s immune to another challenge for a year.
“Don’t change horses in midstream”
“Better the devil you know”
I think May will survive, because there’s nobody else who has wide enough support to take her place. Many Tory MPs will support her, if only to keep the hard Brexiters out. Even if she wins by a narrow margin, she won’t resign.
But she won’t get any meaningful concessions from the EU, and that means she will probably face a no-confidence vote in Parliament in January. If she wins, she will be no nearer getting her withdrawal agreement through Parliament. If she loses, there will be a general election and a long delay, whatever the outcome of the election. So I can foresee the UK applying for an extension of the A50 period, and the whole thing dragging on indefinitely.
Maybe the sky will fall, and put the UK out of its misery!
Unless the ERG are sufficiently pissed off at being stuck with May that they (or just seven of them) decide to they’d be better off forcing an election, either with a view to demanding a hard Brexit manifesto or just out and out splitting.
I mean, it would be irresponsible, harmful to the country and likely self-defeating, but under current circumstances that does not mean it can be ruled out as a plausible turn of events.
That does look like the way to bet, except for “indefinitely”. If the new election results in an anti-Brexit Parliament, reflecting a newly anti-Brexit populace, doesn’t that make dropping the whole thing happen pretty quickly? All it would take would be for the new PM to send the EU a note withdrawing their withdrawal, but stating an intention to discuss some token decentralization of the EU’s customs and immigration system, and everyone but the diehards will be happy.
I have been in a meeting with an important industrial with the cross channel logistics and the meeting after this news of the no confidence chaos turned to the emergency planning for the shifting of “the production risk” out of the UK.
It was a strange thing, it is more the thing I have been used to when we are working on the projects or the developments in the sub-Saharan africa.
There is now a great pessimism among our industrials investments about this.
A lot of hay about the margin of victory being thinner than expected. But if the referendum with 51.9% is apparently a clear mandate, what’s 63%?
Regardless May has become immune from internal challenges for a year and doesn’t have to throw bones to the ERG any more. The EU won’t - rightly- fiddle with the already written Withdrawal Agreement.
Word is May promised some legal safeguards about backstop suspension which was a lie, so DUP support may not last long.
The Deal is dead. ‘No Deal’ is reckless fantasy wank, and Parliament won’t tolerate it.
