Dog's dinner

After reportedly facing a revolt from several of her cabinet colleagues, UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, has opened up the possibility of postponing the March 29th Brexit date until June.





Breitbart: As reported by





Mrs May has said that should the House of Commons not back her Withdrawal Agreement in the second ‘meaningful vote’ scheduled for March 12th, she will allow MPs in the Remain-dominated lower house of Parliament to vote on whether it backs the UK leaving the EU without a deal — an already-agreed legal default position if London does not come to a deal with the Brussels by March 29th.



The prime minister also said that should the House vote down her bill and later vote against leaving without a deal, Parliament will be asked to vote on a “short” extension to Article 50, the legal mechanism for leaving the EU.



The decision to allow the possibility of two votes in the House of Commons that could delay the country’s exit from the bloc came after reports in the media that Mrs May was being pressured to make the concessions by her own Remainer Cabinet ministers.





What this does to the timetable is this:





On the 12th of March there will be a "Meaningful" vote. If that fails, then on 13th of March there will be a vote to leave the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement. If that also fails there will be a vote on the 14th of March to postpone Brexit until June.





How is this likely to play out?





Parliament will vote down the so-called meaningful vote on the 12th of March unless the EU makes major concessions. It won't.





Next will be the vote on leaving with no deal. That has even less chance of passing.

Next there will be a vote to push back the leaving date to June. This is the latest that Brexit can be delayed without the UK having to hold elections to the European Parliament. Parliament will vote for this.





But then what happens next?





There are several possibilities. Maybe the EU will finally throw May a bone (not likely).





Maybe support for no deal will grow (likely but unfortunately this will have little impact on the currently elected MPs).





Maybe the DUP will decide to vote against the government with Labour, the Lib Dems, and the SNP to cause a general election (unlikely as even if the DUP want an election, Labour clearly don't with the new Independent Group of MPs splitting their vote).





Another possibility is that enough Tory MPs will vote "no confidence" in the government, along with other MPs to cause a general election (unlikely as it is just too messy).





This leaves two slightly more likely scenarios.





(1): Brexit supporting MPs in the Conservative Party will back Labour's new policy of offering a Second Referendum forcing the government to hold a Second Referendum. On the face of it, this sounds crazy, but viewed against all the other stuff going on and the logjam that has occurred, it is becoming a stronger possibility. Anti-EU sentiment has hardened and runs deep in the UK so this could be a chance worth taking. This also lets the Labour leadership off the hook.





(2): Article 50 (the leaving date) will be extended even further than June, meaning that the UK will participate in the EU elections, where nationalist parties are expected to do very well.





As this is generally considered a good chance to cast a protest vote in the UK, UKIP and Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party will do extremely well, as will the anti-Brexit Independent Group, while support for Labour and the Conservative support could crash to extremely embarrassing levels.



