All options are still possible, which just shows how useless and ineffective everything up to now has been.
No deal is a bigger possibility now than at any stage - despite the amount of time I’ve heard people say “I think we can say for certain that no deal is dead”. There’s a tremendous delusion on the part of a lot of Remainers about this.
Pro-Brexit media have been rightly ridiculed for the amount of times they have run with deluded stories that have had the narrative “Britain forces EU to climbdown” or “May scores victory over EU”.
The flipside of this is the constant pollyanna predictions of Remainers that “we are moving inexorably towards a soft Brexit or no Brexit”.
Sheer hapless incompetence and stubbornness could easily cause No deal yet.
Nothing has come out of the indicative votes yet, and there’s no guarantee it will. Even if something positive does emerge from those votes, May is likely to ignore it. She’ll likely have to go cap in hand back to the EU looking for another extension, and when the EU ask her why they should give her that extension, she won’t be able to say why. If the EU suggest a General Election, or even if May tries to call one herself, Tory MPs could block it. If there’s a no confidence motion, it’ll still likely fail. A second referendum won’t get through parliament. So why would the EU offer another extension, given that the Brits continue to snooker themselves in every direction and continue to sit around bickering like children?
This is how No deal could happen - and how May could end up with no option but to try and revoke Article 50 by personal decree in the final hours as the only way out - and we don’t even know if that’s possible. Some say it is, some say it isn’t.
May for the first time threatened no Brexit in December and has been dangling that threat with increased regularity and specificity since.
The fact is that No Deal is the only course that has had a recent positive vote in Parliament.
The fact that Tories have voted (in admitably small numbers, which excludes cabinet members) for other courses of action suggest the Government would not survive a VONC if they get to the weekend with no indication that an extension will be requested. There would have to be a lot of swallowing of pride but a Government of National Unity would likely emerge.
Parliament are terrified of deciding anything at the moment but I think the No Deal threat overrides them all.
The biggest risk for a No Deal is the EU27 at this point, imo.
May announcing that No deal is preferable to revoking Article 50 won’t bring any more Brexiteers on board for her deal - it could peel them off if anything.
A truly bizarre aspect, not much remarked, is this truth: Brexit hounds slavering over No Deal reiterate the need, every day, for a backstop. Who could think the word of such people worth anything?
