Chequers Brexit Plan: Is it Dead?

Literally yes. It has been rejected by Barnier and his officials, it is rejected by the Brexiteers, it is rejected by Remainers, small businesses find it frightening and it will never get through the Commons. So that makes it dead. But it is, after over two years of arguing and delay, the only actual plan. There is no other. There is a lot of ideology and words, but no detail at all about what else can be done. Not wished for. Done.

So Chequers may have built into it a phoenix quality so far missed. If May allows the rows within her party and cabinet to go on until there is so much confusion that the threads of reason are completely entangled with fantasy and self delusion, thus making a crash Brexit certain, she may yet win. Because at that point she could agree in the national interest (a new phrase now flying around Downing Street)  that the only option is to stay in the single market and the customs union and the Commons will back her. Opinion polls will indicate a majority of voters back her too on that issue.

Then Brexit, as conceived by the zealots who proposed it without knowing what it was, will be dead.

As the Tory party implodes into open civil war and a general election becomes the only way forward, because it was the governing party that lead the country into one of the most damaging and chaotic experiences in peace time history, it will be driven from office on a scale which will mean, politically, it is dead too.