Corbyn speech has made TMay’s Brexit challenge even harder
The numbers get tighter
The big black cloud that hangs over Mrs May and her team is the possibility that LAB MPs will be whipped to support an amendment backed by one of her Tory Rebels on Brexit.
Since the failure to hold on to the Conservative majority on June 8th her path forward has always been precarious but what has not happened in a major way so far is for an issue to emerge that allows a united Labour Party to join with other non-CON MPs in The Commons to vote with rebel Tory MPs against the government. Sure Mrs May still has the DUP but she also has got the Anna Soubrys & co or her own side who are not going to be shifted.
Essentially Corbyn is moving to a position that is not that much different from that which Tony Blair, when opposition leader from 1994 to 1997, would endeavour to join with rebel conservative MPs in order to undermine the Major government.
This is a smart politics by Corbyn and one which really we should have seen from his party sometime earlier.
The talk of making one of these key decisions a confidence vote simply does not apply anymore. The format for such a move is strictly laid down by the Fixed Term Parliament Act and that does not allow a confidence vote link to a specific issue. So even if Mrs May does lose on a Brexit issue the chances are that with the DUP she would still survive a Commons confidence vote. It is this fact that makes it easier for anti-Brexit CO MPs to rebel. There is less risk of letting Mr. Corbyn in.
William Hill now make it odds on that Mrs. May won’t survive 2018. Maybe.