Snap Elections in the UK before March

It doesn't happen often but now and then a story in the mainstream prestige press will sync in with what is being said on the fringes of the World Wide Web. "6 Months Before Brexit, Many in U.K. Fear ‘It’s Looking Very Grisly’" by Ellen Barry and Stephen Castle is a perfect example.

The Tories are holding their annual party conference in Birmingham this week (last week Labour held its conference in Liverpool) and it is readily apparent to all, at least to Barry and Castle, that the UK is headed for a crash-out Brexit:

After two years of negotiation, Britain has reached a moment of consequence for the process known as Brexit. The insulating layer of time that had protected the country from a potentially failed divorce from the bloc is thinning. Soon, it will be gone, with the threat of major new trade restrictions closing in.

What this could mean for ordinary Britons has been seeping into the newspapers, sometimes in leaks from secret government reports: Northern Ireland has only one energy link to the mainland, so a no-deal Brexit could lead to rolling blackouts and steep price rises; and the energy system could collapse, forcing the military to redeploy generators from Afghanistan to the Irish Sea.

The story here, which Barry and Castle allude to without saying it explicitly, is that Theresa May's government is already finished. Last week in Liverpool Jeremy Corbyn said that Labour will vote against May's "Chequers" version of Brexit, the one recently rejected by EU honchos in Salzburg. Nicola Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party is saying the same thing. The Tories are split with Boris Johnson already running for PM. In others words, May has very little parliamentary backing.

All the current government has is an ongoing game of "chicken," a hope that the EU will toss the Tories a lifeline the closer a crash-out comes. May, in another sign of desperation, is promising a new Irish border proposal.

Another referendum is constantly being floated in the prestige press. But the hour is growing late. I can't imagine May's government surviving long enough to implement a Brexit re-vote. Hence, given the present state of affairs, we are left with snap elections sometime before March 29.