May and Macron

Macron addressed the French nation yesterday without mentioning the Yellow Vests by name, though it is the protests of the Gilets Juanes that brought "Jupiter" before the television cameras. Macron offered a ceremonial display of contrition coupled with several modest legislative fixes: an increase in the minimum wage and a scrap on the overtime tax as well as the social security tax on pensioners earning less than 2,000 euros a month.

Macron is trying to change the topic. The topic has become Macron's resignation. The protests continue.

In London prime minister Theresa May faced parliament after her ignominious about-face on bringing her Brexit plan to a vote. The Trotskyites are upset with Jeremy Corbyn for not promptly demanding a confidence vote. Corbyn wants to allow May one last tour of the continent, which is where May is presently trying to rallying support.

The story goes that May is trying to secure concessions from EU leadership on the Irish backstop. As The New York Times editorial page summarizes:

By delaying Tuesday’s vote by Parliament, Mrs. May bought some time. But not much, and at high cost. She evidently hopes she can squeeze some concessions out of a European Union summit meeting scheduled for Thursday and Friday that could placate some members of Parliament on the most contentious issue, the open border between Ireland and the British region of Northern Ireland. Both sides are committed to keeping the border open. But since that would mean keeping part of Britain in the union’s single market, the British and union negotiators agreed that as a “backstop,” Britain would remain bound by some rules of the European Union if another solution was not found by the end of a transition period in December 2020. To some supporters of Brexit this is anathema. But as an exasperated member of the European Union Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, tweeted, “Just keep in mind that we will never let the Irish down. This delay will further aggravate the uncertainty for people & businesses.”

It is all a kabuki. May will return to face the inevitable next week.

Yves Smith is good this morning on the mechanics of bringing about a vote of no confidence within the Conservative Party. Hard-line Brexiteers are apparently only five letters shy of bringing this about. The risk for the hardliners is that if May survives by winning a majority of Tory MPs, she can't be challenged for another year.

There is a possibility that if May loses the confidence vote and Boris Johnson wins the race to succeed her, the coalition government could fall because BoJo is radioactive.

Smith concludes:

May’s plan, to the extent she has one, is disturbingly reminiscent of the strategy of the Greek government in the 2015 bailout negotiations: playing chicken. May is determined to produce a Brexit, and she is confident that it would wind up being hers rather than a no deal. She is running out the clock on the hope that fear of a crash out will lead the EU to relent on the backstop or Parliament to approve her pact. She’s not entertaining a second referendum or Article 50 revocation or any path to Remain. Recall the Telegraph revealed what her possible fallback is: a referendum that does not have Remain as a choice.

Bloomberg confirms this take:

Faced with a Brexit vote she can’t win, Theresa May appears to be gambling that running down the clock to a no-deal departure might change the arithmetic in Parliament. 

A Cabinet ally of May’s, speaking on condition of anonymity, put the prime minister’s strategy more charitably, saying that if the deal can’t go through then the only option is to keep talking — to EU leaders, in the hope they might offer something more, and to lawmakers, in the hope they might ask a little less.

In other words, May will continue to resist bringing her Brexit plan to vote. Corbyn is going to have to request a vote of confidence. The Tories might beat him to it though.