UK’s Jonathan Pie does Brexit (content warning: contains some Anglo-Saxon mono- and poly- syllables).
Now that May’s plan has been defeated, it’s not even dead. The default remains a hard crash-out, which no one outside the Kremlin who has brain cells and lacks either a foreign home or a few million to hedge with, should want. But the option of giving up the whole thing as a bad job appears to lack a majority in Parliament, even if they could find a way to get a vote on it.
Whether there’s a vote may depend on this guy:
If there’s no majority for anything to stop the oncoming train wreck caused by invoking Article 50, that leaves muddling through, which means asking the EU for a delay, which the EU hints hard it would give but only if there’s some point to it. There won’t be an election, so that’s not the point. There might be a referendum, which would certainly be a point, but that doesn’t seem to have a majority in Parliament either.
Normally I think if something is widely understood to be colossally stupid with no upside then legislatures won’t do it. This could be one of the exceptions. (Failing to act on global warming is certainly another, although maybe the consensus isn’t quite great enough on that one.)
Note for those not following Brexit closely: Labor’s position, which amounts to “put us in charge and we’ll negotiate a better deal” is bunk. The EU isn’t going to give May or Corbin or anyone a materially better deal. And certainly not a ‘customs union’ without free movement of people. (And weird that Labor wants to privilege goods over people, eh?)
The faction that says it wants “Norway Plus” (ie modified EFTA), is at least asking for something that might be attainable–although Norway has the right to veto, and seems at present willing to do it–but it’s a very odd outcome since the UK ends up with all the things it said it didn’t want from the EU, minus the ability to influence any of the governing institutions or rules. A straight-up loss when compared to status quo ante, but I guess less a disaster than a crash-out.
The best way out would be a second referendum, but one of the few things the Tory and Labour leaders agree on is that they don’t want that. May wants the threat of a crashout to revive her deal as the lesser of two evils, thus she doesn’t want a third way. Corbin wants to force an election, and also doesn’t mind leaving the EU as he hates it, so he doesn’t want an option that takes the pressure off for an election and also creates real risk of killing off Brexit.
Which all raises the question of when the UK property crash starts, and how deep it gets. Meanwhile some Brits are stockpiling cans, and it’s hard to say they are unwise to do it…
The line of the day, at least, is surely Robert Waldman’s snark describing the Trump administration’s “petty graft [running] from emoluments to emollients“, i.e. from the Trump Hotel to this.
