So what happened in parliament on Tuesday night? It's complicated. MPs voted in a series of amendments to declare that they will not support a no-deal Brexit. Unfortunately, they also voted to deny themselves the tools to stop it happening. Then they also voted to support Theresa May's deal, but only if she can deliver changes to the treaty that she has utterly failed to secure in the last two years in the next eight weeks.
The ayes to the right, 317. The noes to the left, 301.
So where does this actually leave us? The simple answer is it leaves us probably doing this all again in a fortnight. Essentially, the British parliament is engaged in a massive game of chicken. But it's not just a game of chicken with the EU. We have more or less conceded almost all those points already, which is probably just as well, because it was rather like having Theresa May on a bicycle cycling ferociously towards the European Union in a Hummer. The problem is that at the same time, there's multiple players of this game of chicken, and they're all going in different directions and all converging in the middle. And some of them are actually quite happy to have the smash as well.
At the moment, Mrs May has sided with her own Brexit hardliners in going for one more attempt to face down the European Union over the issue of the backstop which prevents a hard border in Northern Ireland. You can't blame a political leader for placing a high premium on party unity, but it's a little trickier to justify when the whole of the nation's interests are at stake at the same time. Does this mean we're heading towards a no-deal outcome? Not necessarily.
The important thing to remember about Theresa May's strategy is that she believes running down the clock helps. So although it's a white-knuckle ride for everybody else, the prime minister thinks that the closer she takes us to the edge, the more chance she has of getting a deal. But she knows that if too much time elapses, she's going to have to get a deal through with the support of Labour and other opposition party votes, a deal much less to her liking and much less to the liking of her party, but one that at least spares the country the risk of the cliff edge. And even if her hardliners don't think it, Mrs May certainly believes that if the Conservatives take the country over an economic cliff edge, they will be out of power for a generation because the voters will not forgive them for the economic chaos that follows.
