Brexit Crisis: May Buys Time.

For the moment the threat to May from the hard right nationalist wing of the Tory party has diminished but not gone away. The ERG cannot get its 48 names and May has launched a defiant campaign to appeal over the heads of her party, her cabinet and parliament, to take her message directly to the people. She is also making headway with the EU, which is itself now beginning to feel some of the pains of discord over the terms of the deal agreed. But the chances are that the Sunday summit will seal the Withdrawal Agreement and possibly improve and flesh out the political declaration. In a perverse way this is the easy bit.

What comes next is politically horrendous. The fixed term parliament act inhibits the ability of a prime minister to call an election, parliament is hopelessly split in many directions over everything, even another election, the Tory pact with the DUP has all but collapsed because their terms for its continuance can never be met, there is no majority in parliament for the May deal, but neither for any other deal. So what happens?

We do not know. May and her backers hope that it will eventually transpire that her deal is the best available in the national interest and the the hard Brexiteers, who have exerted great trouble-making power thus far, are actually just a noisy minority when things get real. Labour hopes that one way or another the government, already dysfunctional, will collapse altogether and will do all it can to bring that about. Eventually it is likely to end in another referendum or a general election. Unless a lot of people change their tune and line up behind a single objective. The chances of that, at the moment, are tantamount to nil.