Discussions in Brussels will continue over the summer, key leavers including Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom are still onside, and some analysts believe it would do no harm for May to have to abandon aspects of the Chequers deal that the EU27 would always be likely to reject – including the complex “facilitated customs arrangement”.
According to Anand Menon, the director of the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe, the ERG has “scuppered a plan that could never have worked: calm down everyone”. [...]
Paradoxically, the article 50 deadline of March next year could also strengthen May’s hand. A good proportion of MPs in her party – though not many of the ERG – and Labour are convinced that leaving the EU with no deal would be a disaster. So as time runs out, it will become less and less practical for MPs to try to send May back to the drawing board.
The deadline also makes it less tempting for the hardliners to throw May overboard, by firing off 48 letters to Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee, and trigger a vote of no confidence in an attempt to replace her. [...]
Cowley says: “Labour has a four- or five-point lead in some polls. That’s as nothing compared to what I think you’d see if we had a general election fought with the Conservative party in the state they’re in at the moment, because they would just fall in on themselves.”
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