Submitted by Taps Coogan on the 28th of March 2019 to The Sounding Line.

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Yesterday, the UK Parliament attempted to ‘seize control’ of the floundering Brexit process from Theresa May’s government. It offered indicative votes on essentially every Brexit option, other than Theresa May’s transition plan, in order to find out which path actually has majority support.

The result? Parliament voted against every option that it put forward.

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While the closest vote was for a second referendum, this is the second time that such a vote has failed to gain a majority in Parliament. How many times can Parliament re-vote on calling for a second referendum, itself a re-vote on the first referendum? The farcicality of it is hard to overlook.

The DUP has now stated definitively that they will not back Theresa May’s transition deal during its third vote planned for Friday, virtually guaranteeing its defeat. Theresa May had stated that she would resign if her deal passes on the third vote. Does that mean she won’t resign if her deal doesn’t pass? Even her attempt to negotiate her own resignation seems poised backfire.

Meanwhile, ‘No-Deal’ Brexit remains the legal default, though even that has become more ambiguous. With the Article 50 ‘Leave’ date having migrated from March 29th to April 12th, despite the UK Parliament never having explicitly agreed to that date, one has to wonder how many times the leave date will keep migrating. A deadline that can be moved is not a deadline.

The five stages of grief are said to be denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The Brexit process seems to be somewhere in between bargaining and depression. The question is whether the ‘tragedy’ to be accepted is Brexit or its betrayal.

If I had to make a guess, which I am loath to do, it would be this:

Theresa May resigns sometime after her deal fails for the third time (if it even gets to a vote). If she does resign, she is most likely to be replaced by someone who has endorsed ‘No-Deal’ Brexit and presumably that person goes ahead with ‘No-Deal’ Brexit, maybe after another extension and some side deals with the EU. The alternative is that Parliament keeps re-voting on the same failed proposals, like re-doing the referendum, until it gets the result that everyone knows that it wants.

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