I have just come back from lunch at my parents' house. I've said before that I view my mother as the absolute archetypal 'middle England' voter (she reads the Mail and Express etc) and it really hit home today.
- She thinks 'they' (meaning all MPs) should just back May's deal. When I asked her if she knew anything about the deal, she admitted she didn't. She's just bored of Brexit and thinks the deal is the end of it all.
- She asked a lot of questions about the current state of things "why can't they..." etc, but grew quickly bored when I tried to explain it and kept telling me she wasn't following any of it.
- When I told her the only person that could resolve this right now was May, by revoking A50, she reached for the 'yes but we're a democracy and you can't go against the majority' line.
- She blamed the deal not passing on remainer MPs who want their own way, and didn't know what I was talking about when I said the ERG stalwarts were the main scupperers of the deal and they're the least Remainer of them all!
It wasn't bad-tempered but I did have to point out she brought it up and then didn't want to hear how complicated it all was. She wouldn't accept that the MPs don't have a moral duty to vote through the deal... mothers, eh?
Anyway I did come to a bit of clarity in my own thinking about the stalemate Westminster is in... ultimately that Brexit is unfolding chaos (and will be far more chaotic to come) and, to quote Littlefinger, "Chaos is a ladder". There are loads of smaller factions that could just about hold their nose and vote through a deal of sorts if they get something out of it, but a lot of those goals are incompatible and May isn't really the giving type anyway. And on the other hand, the two main parties are way too scared of pissing off a huge part (up to or even over 50%) of the electorate by taking the blame for the 'bad' of Brexit. And, let's be clear, there is no form of Brexit resolution (including cancelling it) that doesn't have a 'bad' end for lots of people.
Hence both mainstream Labour and Tories can't move in any direction for fear of being the one that can be pointed at the end of the process, and any sort of support that could be forthcoming to help shape a direction isn't, because there's no incentive for smaller groups to stick their head above the parapet.
There's literally no way out of this morass (in any direction) without someone (or more likely several someones) being willing to take an epic electoral hit. And they're all hoping someone else will blink first.
So to summarise, why can't they all just vote for the deal? We're fucked...