Debate fatigue

The mobile internet was broken today, so I wasn’t able to obsessively follow the news like I usually do, but it didn’t really matter, since nothing much has changed in the political landscape since yesterday; it still looks like the government is going to suffer a heavy defeat next week, and nobody knows what will happen after that.

There was an interesting YouGov poll published today, which suggested that, while practically no one ranked Theresa May’s deal as their first choice, a clear majority did choose it as their least-bad option, when the alternatives were no-deal or no-Brexit. If this is a true reflection of popular sentiment (and YouGov are fairly reliable) then May should be feeling confident; unfortunately for her though the electorate she has to convince is not the nation at large, but their parliamentary representatives, who, all the evidence suggests, are much less convinced of the merits of compromise.

There is talk of the fateful vote being postponed, presumably in the hope of a mass outbreak of reasonableness. Stranger things have happened I guess, but such a course of action seems most likely to just prolong our agony. I’m coming round to the idea that any decision will be better than continued uncertainty, so that we can start dealing with whatever mess we end up in.