Brexit: The Big May Muddle

UPDATE: Boris Johnson's resignation so far has created no Tory stampede. As was to be expected, Theresa May is blocking the fire exits by inflating the Corbyn bogeymen. According to the Guardian,

The prime minister, Theresa May, addressed MPs at the private 1922 committee for an hour, warning them that divided parties would lose elections and said any further division risked a Labour government, backed by loyalist MPs like Patrick McLoughlin and Damian Green.

One cabinet minister said:

"If we don’t pull together, we risk the election of Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister. At least half a dozen people made that point and the prime minister responded too – what is good for the country is a Conservative government."

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It's been two years since the British voted to opt out of the European Union, a shocking result that prefigured Trump's upset victory five months later. Not a whole lot has been clear since then. The date to keep in mind is March 29, 2019; that's exit day, which is not too far off now, a mere nine months.

The latest Brexit news is the resignation of David Davis, Theresa May's minister in charge of negotiating Britain's withdrawal from the EU. Davis is a hard Brexiter. He resigned because he considers May's plans to pursue a customs union with the bloc too soft.

Talk now is whether the hard Brexiters in the Conservative Party have enough support to trigger a vote of confidence in the prime minister. Yves Smith ("David Davis Resignation Throws UK Brexit, Cabinet Into Chaos") counts only 42 votes out of the 48 needed to launch a new leadership contest.

Speculation centers on what foreign secretary Boris Johnson, also a hard Brexiter, will do now. It seems to me that Brexit has more to do with internal Tory politics than anything else. British business is opposed, and Leave voters, now that the tide of Syrian war refugees has receded, don't seem energized. Cameron called for a public referendum on remaining in the EU in order to steal the single issue that animated UKIP. It worked. UKIP evaporated seemingly overnight once Brexit went through. But the Tories have been left holding the bag, and it is has not been a plus for the party.

Yves Smith concludes with a statement that more uncertainty lies ahead:

I could say more, but we are in the midst of an overly dynamic situation, and much depends on whether May judges it to be necessary to make serious concessions to the ultras, or whether they’ve taken their best shot at her, and she can manage to stare them down. Businesses clearly want to avoid a hard Brexit (and actually any Brexit at all if they understood that even a “soft” Brexit won’t give them the frictionless borders they so keenly want to preserve) and popular sentiment is also moving against a hard Brexit and even towards having a second referendum, despite it being far too late for that sort of things. But whether those external factor make any difference are to be determined.

I don't see the Tories bringing down their own national government. Should it happen, Corbyn likely becomes prime minister. That's an outcome that terrifies neoliberals everywhere.

No, the big May muddle will probably continue right through the summer and into the fall before fear and loathing focuses the mind.