Crisis? What Crisis?

It’s hard to believe that another week has flown by. Only a week ago the country and the government elected to run it were in crisis. Now, here we are, in probably a worse place than before.

The original date for Brexit is a mere 4 days away: this Friday. However, Teresa May’s awesome negotiating skills (AKA begging to the EU) has managed to push this out by, at the very least, a whole two weeks further to April 12th. But that’s only if Parliament can’t come up with an agreement on the PMs Plan. I mean they’ve only been arguing about it for weeks now so another 2 weeks probably won’t change very much. Of course this will, essentially, be the third time ‘The Plan’ is due to come before the House of Commons. The last defeat of 149 was bad enough but pails into insignificance to the previous truly historic vote against. As of a few hours ago it’s been decided not to bring the Plan back just yet for another go. Even the Prime Minister realises that another defeat by any significant numbers would be catastrophic to her premiership.

So, what on earth do they do now? After arguably the biggest public demonstration in a hundred years on the streets of London for a second referendum this weekend and with a petition to repeal Article 50 moving towards 6 million signatures (5,616,825 @ 21.21 on 25th March) it’s difficult to argue that the country is either ‘coming together’ or is moving towards the idea of an acceptable no-deal Brexit. Yet Parliament has still yet to come to a consensus on the issue. Tomorrow is looking like we’ll see a series of ‘indicative votes’ that will aim to show exactly where MPs want to hang their hats. I’m not sure if any of the ideas floating around will get a majority. Even if one does the government has already said that they don’t approve of the votes, will not do anything to enable the process nor say if they will even take the outcome into consideration. In other words they don’t like the game anymore, the rest of the House of Commons are just being mean and they’re taking their half of the game home to sulk.

To not put too fine a point on it it’s a mess, a big, useless, pointless mess. There’s only really one deal on the table – take it or leave it. The view being to leave it. So, clearly that only leaves a few options: No deal – which parliament has already rejected, Revoking Article 50 – which would probably cause riots, a 2nd referendum – which would probably cause riots or…… Or what? That’s a VERY good question. There are a number of alternatives – all of them bad to one degree or another and all of them rejected by significant numbers of people both inside and outside parliament. It’s an impasse that I can’t see around. But what I think is going to happen whether people want it or not is what I was predicting originally for this Friday. Because no one can agree on a deal or any other way forward there is only one alternative: a No-Deal Scenario by default. Europe say they are prepared. They may well be – or at least as much as they can be. We, however, are not prepared (in my estimation). So, in just under 3 weeks we crash out of Europe. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. But I will try to report for as long as I can. For as long as the power lasts. For as long as my food holds out. For as long as I can hold off the biker gangs looking for the last can of tuna fish. I just hope that they believe me when I say I’m a vegetarian…..