Winston Churchill once said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going”.
A more suitable quote you may not find for this very “meaningful” – if somewhat tumultuous – week in Westminster.
Having dramatically called off her Brexit vote in December due to what was expected to be a heavy defeat, Theresa May is scheduled to put her deal – the only deal (for now) – to parliament tomorrow.
I say “scheduled”, but if she lives up to pre-Christmas antics she may decide to pull the plug again. We here in Power Tower make it a 1/20 shot her motion gets defeated (that’s a 95% probability), just about the same price as Andy Murry appearing on the short list for the 2019 installation of BBC Sports Personality of the Year following his tearful retirement!
Speaking of tears, if it’s all going to end in them for the Prime Minister, what’s Plan B should her motion bite the dust? The answer is a common one at this point of the Brexit process: nobody really knows.
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Leader, appears happy to lurk in the shadows and threaten motions of no-confidence when anybody asks him a difficult question.
He knows a little bit about difficult situations and confidence votes from an internal party perspective, but he has yet to indicate he knows that much about Brexit and that his direct involvement would improve the situation at all.
It’s 5/4 that we see a UK General Election in 2019 (the favourite in the Next Year market), so we may be getting to a point where Corbyn gets to put his money where his mouth is, whether he wants to or not!
The only certainty about the week ahead is uncertainty.
And, for all those people who want to stick their head in the sand and come out when Brexit has run its course, well, Winston Churchill again said it best: ”Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”
It’s currently 1/33 that the HoC rejects May’s Brexit deal