Big decision time on Brexit is fast approaching

At the moment there is bedlam in the House of Commons with more Brexit ideas than sense floating around. The so-called indicative votes coming up could mean a Norway-style Brexit, a Canada-style Brexit, a softly soft Brexit, a people's vote or for all I know a combination of all of the above. But Theresa May will have none of it. She doesn't believe that any of these alternatives to her Brexit deal would honour either the 2016 referendum vote or the Tory Party manifesto which was put before the people in her disastrous snap election in 2017. She is determined not to allow a soft Brexit, not to allow a no-deal Brexit and definitely not to allow a no-Brexit-at-all Brexit. What she does believe in, wait for it......is HER Brexit deal which she took more than two years to negotiate with our EU "partners" which is neither soft nor hard but somewhere in the middle. This has been her mantra since Day One, and she's not going to change her view just because a posh Tory MP and former minister Sir Oliver Letwin has succeeded in persuading a majority of MPs to vote for his proposal - looking at all the other options for leaving the EU. All her critics are saying Theresa May is putting her party before the country. But this is a little unfair. After all if she didn't take into account the rabidly right-wing element in the Tory Party she could never get anything done for her country because they would just vote it down and bring the sledgehammer 10-member Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) with them. Without their votes, she loses, the country loses. Ergo, she has to try and win over the Brexiteers who would desperately love to have a no-deal Brexit but fear a soft Brexit so much they might even suport Theresa May after all. Well, the elegant Etonian Jacob Rees-Mogg, of the so-called European Research Group of 60 Tory Brexiteers, has now indicated he might go over to Theresa's side because if Sir Oliver Letwin's intervention leads to a soft Brexit deal - ie staying as close to the EU as legally possible without actually beng a member anymore - all his campaigning and broadcasting will have been for nought. This is what Theresa May is counting on: making the alternatives look so awful for the Brexiteers that they will side with a prime minister they can't stand and a deal they hate. Now that sounds very weird but it's what's called Real Politik. The worst possible solution would be the one Downing Street is now whispering about, a snap election. That would achieve absolutely zilch except more chaos, more delay and probably a Labour government. I think the snap election whisper is just another blackmail component to force the Brexiteers to play ball. Even at this late stage it might work. Provided the DUP ladies and gentlemen come on board too, Theresa May could still be saved by the ERG, and then and only then will she able to shout down her critics and claim she did it all for Queen and country.