She Has a Cunning Plan

So, the Cabinet has finally agreed a plan to put to the EU. If previous plans (if they can be called that) are anything to go by - and given this plan is obviously a compromise between differing factions in the Cabinet, and thus a dog's dinner - it will be refused by the EU as unworkable and crossing several of their red lines. I believe she knows this will happen, but it's part of her strategy.

My guess is that, if the EU rejects Mrs May's plan, she will be left with no other option than a hard Brexit, which would be anathema to business and, I suspect, to her. In order to extricate herself from a course of action that would leave the Conservatives with no funding from business and the consequences of a failed economy before the next General Election, she needs an escape route that lays the blame elsewhere, and the only way in which this can be accomplished is through a 2nd referendum.

14 straight polls in a row have indicated that support for Brexit, especially a hard Brexit, is draining away among the populace - that cannot have escaped Mrs May's attention. If the will of the people is paramount, as Brexiteers never tire of telling us, then the people need to be consulted to ascertain if their will has changed in the 2 years since the initial vote - a week, after all, is a long time in politics. There's no escaping that argument, logically, intellectually or morally, as a democracy that cannot change its mind is no longer a democracy.

On three occasions – Denmark on the Maastricht Treaty, Ireland on the Nice Treaty and Ireland again on the Lisbon Treaty – voters have initially rejected an EU treaty only to vote in favour of it in a second referendum. History is with the remain arguments.

I could be wrong, but I don't believe Mrs May is as stupid as many believe her to be. This situation has been engineered.