THREAD: 1. The whole May vote delay has a whiff of theatre to it which makes this imposed four-weeks before voting the cliffhanger mid-season break. Everything feels meticulously staged. My sense is a backstop time limit is already agreed; this panto is to give May momentum.
2. We saw a dry run of this before. Just like a few well-placed leaks in 2017 that “the EU is demanding £100bn as settlement” when all previous estimates had been around the £40bn that we eventually agreed to. The £100bn rumour was floated purely to give May a perceived victory.
3. Had she come to the House with £39bn to start with, it would have been shouted down. But against a fictional £100bn she can claim to have battled the EU and prevailed (and, indeed, repeatedly has made that claim precisely). And so it may be with her final deal.
4. By delaying the vote she raises the stakes and creates a sense of heightened peril, enhanced by no-deal preparation stories, troops on stand-by etc. She then comes back from Brussels three days before the vote waving some codicil with a time limited backstop (2023? 2028?).
5. This gives her momentum; it creates a sense of relief in those worried about no deal, making the unpalatable, palatable by virtue of this deus ex machina. It allows her the superiority of being able to say “you said it couldn’t be done, but here it is”, which she loves doing.
6. This, I think, is why the draft from the last EU council changed. Not because the EU were being mean, but because a resolution which said “we will keep working on finding a solution” would have been counterproductive to the sense of “all is lost”, essential to May succeeding.
7. Now, it is by no means certain the deal would pass at that point. It might still be voted down, but she will have given herself a decent chance against the odds.
8. This is, naturally, just speculation, albeit educated speculation based on having observed how deals with the EU have worked in the past. But I thought it was worth putting it on record.
