No plan B

I’ve been out of the country for a few days, on a trip that I planned back in the summer, before I knew that there would be a constitutional crisis to enjoy this month, and have thus been unable to keep up with the news.

I was sure that I would have missed some important development while I was away, but it turns out that I needn’t have worried, since the situation has been more or less static since the tumultuous events of last week. Theresa May has abandoned her brief flirtation with reasonableness, and returned to peddling her discredited plan, while the opposition has yet to coalesce around a workable alternative. The EU remain disinclined to grant any further concessions. Time, and warehouse space, continues to run out.

There is talk of a cross-party group of MPs seizing control of the agenda, and forcing at least a delay to the leave date, but it’s not clear that they actually have the votes to do this, or that the government wouldn’t be able to just ignore them. In any case that would just put off the day of reckoning, with no sign that any realistic plan would emerge in the extra time.

Labour do seem to be edging towards support for a second referendum, which at this point looks like the least-bad option; if they do back it there might just be a majority in favour of this course of action when amendments are voted on next week. Again though, the government maintain that such a resolution would be non-binding, and they might continue to run the clock down; no meaningful vote is due until next month, by which time is may be too late to turn back from the cliff edge.