The weakness of Theresa May’s position…
[See UPDATE at end of post.]
…is described here:
Only days ago, May had to withdraw a vote on her Brexit Withdrawal Agreement from Parliament because it was universally recognized that she would lose it. Bear in mind that this vote was to confirm her signal achievement, which she has spent the last two years negotiating and promoting, undistracted by any significant success or even aspiration on other issues. Moreover, she is opposed on it by four-fifths of Tory supporters in the country on it. Her attempt to salvage the Withdrawal Agreement internationally by a tour of European capitals since Monday has been a complete failure. And Tories in Parliament are in disarray and semi-rebellion. It should be curtains for May.
And yet she may win the vote and hang on, considerably weakened. The results of the vote should be available soon, at which point I plan to update this post.
UPDATE 4:20 PM:
May lives to fight another day. Here’s how the vote went:
[The 200 to 117 vote] buys her time: The Prime Minister’s victory protects her from another leadership challenge from within her own party for 12 months.
But the result will not offer any assurances to the Prime Minister’s supporters that she is able to get her all-important Brexit deal through the UK’s Parliament.
In that first article, written before the vote, the author points out:
Yet as Tory MPs go into the committee room to cast their votes tonight, she is a firm favorite to survive. That may surprise you, but it’s happened before. When John Major called a confidence vote on himself in order to quell widespread discontent on the Tory benches, commentators warned that he was a deadweight on Tory hopes of reelection and that MPs who backed him would be turkeys voting for Christmas. But the turkeys voted for Christmas nonetheless, and Christmas promptly arrived in the form of Tony Blair’s 1997 Labour landslide, which cut the number of Tory turkeys in Parliament down to a low of 197. That experience does not seem to be deterring May’s supporters, however.
So this could ultimately backfire on the Tories.
David Goldman has proposed that the reason for opposition among the elites in Britain is the fact the a lot of the GDP in London comes from financial firms in The City. There has been quite a bit of migration of such firms to London and the same goes for high tech. The French say “We have a Silicon Valley. It is located in the Thames Estuary.” Both types of companies are globalist and resemble their San Francisco equivalent. The reasoning is the same. I don’t know how much potential for manufacturing remains in Britain. They were the original Industrial Revolution but that was a long time ago.
It has been said that the Industrial Revolution moved to England with the Revocation of The Edict of Nantes. That drove the Huguenots to Britain and Germany. The results were disastrous for France.
I don’t know if Industrial England can recover.
If she wins, it may be because of stuff like this: MPs have reacted with fury after a Theresa May loyalist who was stripped of the Tory whip after sending lewd text messages to two barmaids had it restored hours before the crucial confidence vote.
Although the details are entirely different, it reminds me of Nancy Pelosi. Most of the elected reps. that are supposed to matter don’t want her. But she just has too much clout in those smoke filled rooms that none of us see.
Not that I feel sorry for May, but she had an almost impossible task. She went into a negotiation where everyone knew that coming out without a deal was not an option for her. The EU swamp held all the cards.
The only alternative that seems remotely possible to me, would be for the U.K. to go on the offensive, and try to take Italy and maybe one or two smaller members out of the EU with them. Even if there was only a small likelihood that others would leave, it could change the entire tenor of the negotiation for the U.K. A U.K. trade deal with North America would help set a fire under the EU.
But Mike K’s point, which I agree with, could make non-idle threats by the U.K. very risky. An economic war with the EU could result in a 100’s of billions exodus from London. Think Deutsche Bank. For whatever reason, London is one of the biggest financial hubs.
Another point to consider is Macron’s promise to give away a lot of money to workers. (It sounds like he may have majored in economics at BU withe A O-C’s profs.) Anyway Germany is not going to be happy about France handling its finances like Italy, especially since Deutsche Bank and Commerz Bank are in trouble and the country is being squeezed on its dealings with Iran. Europe has problems.
She survived about 117 to 100. Not exactly a vote of confidence.
Mike K,
It was 200 to 117.
People are consistently misunderstanding what May is up to in the UK. Her only purpose from the moment Cameron resigned is to keep the UK in the EU- it was why Boris Johnson was not allowed to ascend to 10 Downing after Cameron’s resignation- he would have had no problems with exiting faster and without a deal. The only way May could defeat Brexit that was to make such a mess of the Brexit process that the Tories and Labour would have ‘no choice’ but to propose a 2nd referendum- a referendum they don’t intend to lose the second time around. The last necessary piece was put onto the board just this week with the ruling that Article 50 can be withdrawn by the British any time they want, thus making a 2nd referendum a legal possibility.
And we already are seeing the plan being revealed for how Remain intends to win the 2nd referendum- they will put two different Brexit options along side a single Remain option, thus dividing the Brexit vote.
Yancey Ward:
Very very interesting. Do you have some links?
It wouldn’t surprise me if the underhanded scenario you’re describing was true. The question is would May risk destroying the Conservative Party to pull this stunt. It’s not as if she didn’t have considerable opposition in her campaign for Tory leader and it’s not as if there isn’t a considerable Euroskeptic constituency at the apex of the Conservative Party.
(adjusts tinfoil hat)
I think Yancey’s 100% spot on…but I suspect the riots in France may pale in comparison to what the Brexiteers might do if that eventuality plays out & a 2nd Referendum is called.
And again I ask…where would the massive Muslim immigrant population in the UK come down on this one & what would they do if the “Leave” faction started donning yellow vests & causing a ruckus around Parliament House?
Now, instead of Tony Blair, we have Corbyn waiting in the wings, an overt anti-semite and hater of Western Civ. Perhaps we should be preparing to receive refugees from Blighty.
Michael Lonie on December 12, 2018 at 11:20 pm at 11:20 pm said:
Now, instead of Tony Blair, we have Corbyn waiting in the wings, an overt anti-semite and hater of Western Civ. Perhaps we should be preparing to receive refugees from Blighty.
* * *
In which case, the Left will suddenly decide it loves travel bans.
Link
As for the cancellation of Article 50, you need only Google. For over 2 years, the Brexit vote from June 2016 appeared to guarantee an exit of one kind or the other once Article 50 was invoked- the treaty appeared to bar a unilateral withdrawal of the notice by the British- so it was either Brexit with a deal, or Brexit without deal (by March 2019 as of today). However, the EU courts have now indicated that the British can remain on their own choice, thus making a 2nd referendum a legal option of the British Government. As soon as that piece appeared on the board, the Remainers started proposing 3-way referendums designed to split the Brexit vote, thus guaranteeing a Remain win.
Some of the three way proponents have tried to create a so-called “fair” 3 way referendum a trick, but when you examine them in detail, they all turn out to greatly favor the Remain faction which wants neither a soft nor hard exit- the point being that the Remain faction is undivided politically, while Brexit is politically divided to a greater extent.