Quote Originally Posted by WES View Post
My view is that at the last minute the EU will offer us something short of no backstop but that will be enough for May to get her deal through as the only other option will be no deal. And I think it will be Labour votes not ERG votes that swing it her way.

Is that contrary to anything I have posted in the past?
I think pretty much everyone believes this is what the EU will do. However, it is a high-risk manoeuvre that still allows plenty of scope for failure.
If (as seems likely) May needs Labour votes to get her deal, she will be widely seen as having betrayed her party, membership and a large proportion of her voters and her position will be largely untenable. She would almost certainly then have to stand down (the knives will be out as soon as Brexit - in whatever form - is delivered. The tory party will probably never recover from such an outcome (but it's arguable that that was always likely to have been the case given its fundamental splits on this issue - which will by that stage have destroyed every Tory PM since Heath).
Now, you may say she's 'made a good fist' of an impossible situation and from a purely dispassionate view that may be the case. However, politics is not a dispassionate business and the fact is that she may well go down in history as the Prime Minister who broke the Tory party and let Jeremy Corbyn into Downing St. Given which, I would question how well she would be viewed by posterity.