No.11 – Mrs May: The End is Nigh!

Dear James, 

You may be relieved to hear that this message will be shorter than my others.

Mrs May has returned from Brussels, as expected, empty handed. She lies battered and forlorn at the foot of the brick wall of European solidarity. 

For us it is now all down to the parliamentary arithmetic. Since the Vote of Confidence last Tuesday we know that at least 117 of your Conservative colleagues are arch-Brexiteers. There are probably more of them among the ‘salaried’ MPs who last Tuesday voted for their jobs rather than their principles. So let’s add another 50 to take account of these hidden naysayers. That makes 167 - say 170 - of Tory MPs implacably against Mrs May’s deal. Add to them the 10 DUP MPs and to them, attach the 10 or 12 Labour MPs against the deal. That makes 192 - say 200 MPs set hard against Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement. Of course, the big unknown in all this is Mr Corbyn. He has 257 colleagues, the great majority who are for another vote on our membership of the EU. At the moment he is the sticking point but, at some time in the near future, will reveal his hand. So the likely picture is of 200 MPs against the deal and 450 either for another referendum or uncertain. You may be one of the 450 or maybe one of the 50 ‘salaried’ MPs hiding their true allegiances. Whichever you are, you will soon have to decide and reveal your true allegiance.  

So my question to you James is, where do you stand? And, more to the point, where will you stand when either a) the Tory Party formalises its split or b) when you are asked to vote for or against the ultimate parliamentary step i.e. to decide on a People’s Vote? You may, of course, have to face and decide on both scenarios.

It is clear to me that Theresa May has come to the end of her long, lonely journey to a compromise that was never there. She has been brave but also blind. For the Brexiteers, Canada +++, Norway +, or No Deal are all now dead ends and parliament is blocked. Mrs May may just hang on over Xmas or even limp, exhausted into 2019. The fact is that she has become an empty cypher and British politics is at massive turning point. We have to decide whether to become a small island state arguing with itself interminably about its identity or to return to the decision making centre of the largest free market enterprise the world has ever known. 

You are at the centre of this momentous decision James. Please don’t let us down. Think of the national interest. Please put the vote back to the people!

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent