BREXIT!!: Ian Dunt: Week in Review: The Frazzlfication Ends Now. For a Little Bit.: "On January 15th, Theresa May's Brexit deal was defeated by a historic margin. Immediately afterwards, Jeremy Corbyn called a no-confidence vote, which he lost. Then the Malthouse Compromise was born, as a kind of release valve for MPs' desperate stupidity. The government responded by whipping in support of its evil twin, the Brady amendment, and won, thereby sabotaging its own negotiating strategy. Labour published a new Brexit strategy, which looked suspiciously like Norway Plus but was different to it in ways they were unable or unwilling to describe. The government then proceeded to lose a vote on the policy which MPs had forced on it the week before, driving British politics into a kind of post-modern chasm in which David Lynch became the creative director of parliament. Then a group of Labour and Tory MPs split from the party to form the Independent Group. May announced she would request a dual extension of Article 50-short in the case of a deal and long if not. She later went back on this and requested only the short extension. She also secured an update to her deal with the Europeans which didn't really change anything. MPs promptly and unsurprisingly rejected it again. In response, the government put forward a convoluted motion on no-deal, whipped MPs to oppose an amendment which simplified it, lost, and had to therefore whip against its own motion even though it amounted to the exact policy it said it was pursuing anyway. Then anyone who still believed in parliamentary democracy decided maybe it wasn't such a great idea after all. Soon enough John Bercow popped up and refused to allow May to bring her deal back to the Commons a third time unless it was changed. May secured her first extension of Article 50, but then MPs passed an amendment taking control of the Brexit process, triggering a new bout of constitutional chaos. The Brexit process became a kind of executive dual carriageway, with the government pursing one strategy and parliament another. In a bid to get MPs to back her deal, May offered her own resignation as an incentive, seemingly oblivious to how logically and morally broken that was as a strategy. MPs, for their part, held a series of indicative votes and found no majority. May stripped her deal in two to get it past Bercow, put it before the Commons again, and lost again. MPs held more indicative votes and still could not find a majority. Pitiful broken toys scattered everywhere. May announced she would seek another Article 50 extension. Parliament passed a bill, independently of government, forcing her to do the thing she said she would do, given that her reputation for reliability at this stage was frankly not what it was. And then, finally, the EU offered an extension to October 31st. And now here we are. Three months later and about twelve hundred years older...
#noted
