Thread by @Peter___Ward

Ok. So here goes an attempt to summarise where May is leading the U.K. with her Chequers plan.

First, it can’t of escaped anyone even remotely interested in politics that the Chequers proposal is universally hated by all sides. 1/

Labour have announced they’ll vote against it (they’ll vote against any deal as it’s an opportunity to force an election) so with a minority government the PM needs a deal with full party unity. This is where she’s made a huge mistake. 2/

Before Chequers, she had around 8 guaranteed “rebels” to worry about, the EU withdrawal act passed through parliament relatively unscathed showing the unity in the original position set out in Lancaster house (an amazing effort by @SteveBakerHW as well getting that through) 3/

The group @StandUp4Brexit has 26 MPs signed up to reject Chequers. That’s a lot lower than the 80 that were prepared to vote against the government to push the ERG amendments. 4/

So it’s clear that the Prime Minister isn’t able to force through a bad deal. So Chequers won’t be accepted. (Audible cheers...) here’s the next issue, there’s not enough support for WTO Brexit either... 5/

Pragmatic sensible remain voting Tories will support an orderly exit, with a free trade agreement, they’re unlikely to accept the WTO (wrongly called “no deal”) Brexit as they’ll see it as “crashing out” so the rebels increase dramatically 6/

So Chequers won’t get past MPs and WTO won’t get past MPs. That leaves parliament grid locked and the calls to put the question back to the people will grow stronger 7/

There’s merit to that, if the question is;

“Of these 2 options which would you prefer?” 8/

The issue is, Parliament wouldn’t miss an opportunity to reverse a decision most of its members disagree with. So they’ll insist that a Remain option is included, which makes the referendum a non starter. 9/

General election it is then... but how would Labour and Conservatives place their Brexit policies? Given labour’s voted against a deal (in this scenario) and the Conservatives are still torn, it’s unlikely a general election would solve the issue. 10/

That would make a party split in both Labour and Conservatives incredibly likely, at a time we need strong and stable leadership (don’t laugh) we’d have pure chaos 11/

So how do we get around this Kobayashi Maru (impossible test)? Simple, Chequers needs to be abandoned now, we build on the offer the EU made in March. 12/

There isn’t an alternative that respects democracy and can make it through parliament, the sooner MPs realise this, the sooner a good deal for Britain and the EU can be achieved. #StandUp4Brexit