Theresa May, Putschist + NYT Continues Attack on al-Saud

Well, I suppose I might have been incorrect last week when I opined that British democracy was not more dysfunctional than the American variety.

After repeatedly assuring the public last week that the momentous Brexit vote in parliament would proceed on schedule for Tuesday, December 11, BBC is reporting, based on insider accounts, that May will postpone the vote.

"The report that May could cancel the vote came just hours after the top EU court ruled that Britain could cancel its notice to leave the bloc, which it is due to exit on March, 29."

May's path forward appears to be another trip to Brussels to plead for additional concessions. Why would the EU oblige her? Clearly May's only goal is to extend the life of her split, unpopular government and prevent new elections. The zombie plods on!

Checking with Yves Smith this morning, she lists the probable outcomes if May's vote had failed tomorrow:

• May could face a vote of no confidence in the Commons. Kier Starmer has said that Labour would table a vote, but with the DUP stating that they would support the Conservatives in such a vote, this is unlikely to succeed. If the Government did fall, there would be 14 days for another Government to win a vote of confidence in the Commons, or the country will have a General Election.

• Conservative MPs put in 48 letters, and the party has to have a confidence vote in the Prime Minister. If 48 letters go in, this would require a swift vote of confidence, where May must win more than 50 per cemt of the 315 eligible MPs. If she lost, the party then has to elect a new leader. Given the incredibly short timescale before 29th March, the Conservative Party would be signing its own death warrant to do this.

• Labour tries to table a censure motion about May – this is effectively a personal vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, which is what happened recently to Chris Grayling. This would potentially allow Tory MPs to vote against the May without bringing down the Government. However the Government is under no obligation to provide time for an Opposition Day before Christmas, so this is unlikely to happen.

• The Prime Minister goes to negotiate with Brussels and brings back an amended deal. This would then require the Government to win a vote on its renegotiated deal, using the procedure outlined above. If no negotiated deal can pass through the Commons the UK will leave the EU without a deal.

For the last several weeks the scenario of choice floated in the pages of the mainstream press has been for May to lose the initial vote in parliament, but not by a disastrous margin, at which point she would proclaim renewed determination for a better deal and off to Brussels she would go.

That scenario started to disintegrate at the end of last week when it became apparent that May had been lying to the public about what exactly her Brexit deal with the EU entailed. Most MPs could not be seen to publicly support it. It was headed for a huge defeat in parliament.

So, despite numerous promises that the vote would go on, May is skipping the "lose round one" part of the scenario and, apparently, proceeding directly to the return to Brussels kabuki.

The shortcoming of May's about-face is that it deprives her coalition government, already living on borrowed time, of the last shred of credibility. May has zero credibility. The mainstream media can no longer shield her. 

A sort of putsch is underway where the Tories and the DUP are trying to lock in a crash-out. That's the only thing that makes sense at this point, above and beyond blocking snap elections. But the only way that's possible, given the EU ruling that Britain can simply cancel its notice to leave the bloc, is for the Tory coalition government to stay in power until March 29. Given all that has transpired since Chequers, to accomplish this will require a putsch.

Once again, as this latest Brexit episode illustrates, the zombie neoliberal paradigm refuses to be defeated. We are reminded again and again by those in power that there is no alternative. Use this lens to look at the unfolding events in France.

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Yesterday The New York Times devoted prominent placement in its cultural aircraft carrier, the Sunday edition, to two weighty, significant attacks on the House of Saud: the front-page account, "The Wooing of Jared Kushner: How the Saudis Got a Friend in the White House," of how Trump arrived at his main foreign policy initiative via a November 2016 meeting between son-in-law Jared Kushner and a Saudi delegation of high-raking officials; and Nicholas Kristof's must-read "Your Tax Dollars Help Starve Children," which thoroughly demolishes the U.S. case for assisting the Saudi-UAE coalition's war on Yemen.