Rumours coming down that May has revealed her Plan B to cabinet, which is to bring the Deal back to the Commons again. Plan B is Plan A rehashed.
Apparently half the cabinet begged May to open talks with moderate Labour MPs and were rejected, Fox saying Tory backbenchers ‘wouldn’t wear it’. And May demurred on ruling out No Deal.
Given this, if it’s true, I’m inclined to think May could lose the confidence vote Labour will lay tomorrow. Enough Tory rebels and the DUP could jump overboard.
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No matter what happens MPs are very likely going to have to answer to their constituents for their vote tonight (much more so than usual, I expect). Abstention seems a tricky one to sell, particularly when compared to, say, Tulip Siddiqi delaying her caesarean section and coming in to vote on principle.
Pardon my ignorance but does the UK really *have *to do something? Can they just shelve Brexit forever and say “let’s pretend nothing happened?” Or does the EU *want *to kick them out by now?
The government loses the vote but May wins the vote of no confidence because nobody wants Corbyn in charge.
No, the UK doesn’t have to leave the EU, and the EU would be thrilled to have the UK stay (although Spain will probably try once again to squeeze out a concession on Gibraltar). The Brexit referendum was purely advisory and legally obligated no one to do anything, although it indicated a broad (and ill-defined) political will that the government tried and failed to appease.
Socially, if the UK simply said “Welp, we tried to leave and it can’t be done without significant damage to the country” the ramifications would be right-wing unrest of varying sorts and the return of Nigel Farage, which is a whole other sort of horror. What those would lead to is hard to say: possibly nothing, but then again the Russians and the Daily Mail would probably go back into full shitstirring mode and God only knows how bad that could get.
ETA: No way in hell May calls a snap general election after how the last one went.
To be precise, both the European Court of Justice in its binding decision and the advisory opinions prior to this all held that the UK government can by itself give notice of the withdrawal of the notification. There is a condition that the appropriate authority must do so, but it is essentially all up to the UK.
But if they do nothing, they crash out on 29 march.
Impressive.
I read that it is the largest defeat in the Commons in 100 years.
She must either resign or she should make immediate the threat of completely withdrawing the article 50 to put the fear of God in the crazies of the CP since all but the lunatics agree the No Deal is a catastrophe.
Since there appears to be no coherent UK consensus on the paths or even the broad terms, it really is something a new consolidated government must bring forward if there is the Exit.
That’s just stunning. I expected May to lose, but not by a 2 to 1 margin. I’m not sure what the MPs are hoping for. They don’t like the deal, but they all hate different parts of it. The EU is unlikely to sweeten the pot much, because why would they? Oh, well, the next ten weeks should be interesting.
Demolished, biggest defeat in U.K. history. Now, we have the no confidence vote. As of now, the DUP intends to vote with the government, but who knows what can transpire overnight.
It seems to me that at this stage a huge loss in this vote is far better than a smaller loss, since it’s surely more likely to precipitate something more decisive than wasting more time trying to tweak the existing deal and bring it back to parliament.
With a loss that big on an issue that big, I can’t see how anyone could possibly not have a no confidence vote. Heck, with that big a beating, May should be calling for the vote herself.
Almost the first thing the PM said when she stood up after the vote was that confidence in the government needed to be tested, and that if the leader of the opposition did not wish to table the motion, then the government would accept one of the minor opposition parties doing so (something the government doesn’t have to do). Corbyn tabled the motion.
(table in the UK English sense, rather than the US one)
Well, our two nations do seem to be converging on the “no functional government” approach. A new Special Relationship, for two nations that are certainly acting like they are “special”, now for a wider range of definitions of the word.
