Theresa May to face leadership challenge

[scooterscot]

Place your bets? Will she survive?

Theresa May to face leadership challenge - BBC News

UK Prime Minister Theresa May will face a vote of no confidence in her leadership later on Wednesday.Conservative MPs will vote between 18:00 GMT and 20:00 GMT.
The challenge to Mrs May's position comes after the required 48 letters calling for a contest were delivered.
Mrs May, who has been prime minister since shortly after the UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016, has faced criticism in her party for the Brexit plan she has negotiated.
Guide: Rules for the challenge to Theresa May
Who has written no confidence letters?
It is not yet known how quickly the result of the vote will be announced, but Mrs May needs to get a majority in her favour to win it.
If that happens she can not be challenged for at least another year.
If Mrs May does not win the vote there would then be a Conservative leadership contest in which she could not stand.
There is also an option that even if Mrs May won - but not overwhelmingly - she may decide to stand down as party leader.
Because the Conservative Party is the largest party in the House of Commons, whoever is leader of the party would be expected to be prime minister.

[WordIsBond]

I hope not. What an incompetent person.

You never tell your opponent in a negotiation what your red lines are, you have immediately guaranteed they'll never give you more than that, and they'll push you on them. You always start your negotiating position tougher than you want to end up so that you have room to give.

You never approach things as if you have to have a deal by failing to prepare for no deal. You prepare for no deal and hope for something better. The stronger you can make your position without a deal the better chance of getting a good deal. This daft person said no deal was better than a bad deal but she never prepared for no deal and did everything she could to weaken the position, and then presented a deal that virtually no one would support.

If the Tories keep this person in power they guarantee Prime Minister Corbyn, and perhaps in less than two years. It won't take very many of those old codgers to drop off and Labour winning the by-election to reach the point where even the DUP can't prop her up, if they even want to anymore. And no way Theresa May can win an election. Nobody trusts her.

Maybe they will drop the insane Red Tory experiment and get someone who is actually conservative, and we can quit having barmy witch hunts against entrepreneurs on tax, etc.

At least we can dream.

[TwoWolves]

Maybe they will drop the insane Red Tory experiment and get someone who is actually conservative, and we can quit having barmy witch hunts against entrepreneurs on tax, etc.

At least we can dream.

This. The impediment is that the Civil Service is stuffed full of dreamers awaiting a Cobyn Eutopia or Blairite renaissance and they control a lot of policy in reality.

[jamesbrown]

Difficult to say in the privacy of a secret ballot, but the gov't payroll is unusually large, which doesn't hurt. Depends how many remainers vote no confidence, but probably not many. Wild guess: 187-128 in favour of her staying.

[meridian]

The options in the poll were confusing.

Where is "Yes - weak and wobbly"?

[WordIsBond]

Difficult to say in the privacy of a secret ballot, but the gov't payroll is unusually large, which doesn't hurt. Depends how many remainers vote no confidence, but probably not many. Wild guess: 187-128 in favour of her staying.

I hope you are wrong. She's doing Tory remainers no favours. We're charging rapidly towards no deal simply because she didn't prepare for it, just like we charged rapidly towards war because Chamberlain and others wouldn't prepare for it. It's the exact same thing.

She made herself so weak that she couldn't get a deal that could pass the Commons, and so there is going to be no deal. If she'd been competent, she probably could have achieved a deal that would have given most Remainers most of what they want.

[jamesbrown]

I hope you are wrong. She's doing Tory remainers no favours. We're charging rapidly towards no deal simply because she didn't prepare for it, just like we charged rapidly towards war because Chamberlain and others wouldn't prepare for it. It's the exact same thing.

She made herself so weak that she couldn't get a deal that could pass the Commons, and so there is going to be no deal. If she'd been competent, she probably could have achieved a deal that would have given most Remainers most of what they want.

IMO, the only question is by how much she'll win. Over 100 voting no confidence (which seems somewhat likely), and she'll be further weakened, but not fatally. "Nothing has changed."

[GreenMirror]

We need an election or referendum. Do you want the government to stay? Tory and Labour only seem bothered who is in power. They don't care about the UK.

[OwlHoot]

We need an election or referendum. Do you want the government to stay? Tory and Labour only seem bothered who is in power. They don't care about the UK.

I'm starting to wonder whether Theresa May isn't the craftiest politician ever, and has been angling and scheming for a no deal Brexit right from the start, incredible as it sounds.

If you think about it, she triggered Article 50 as soon as possible, thus starting the leaving clock, and has resisted attempts to extend the deadline or have a second referendum.

Since then she has come up with a laughably inadequate deal that any sane person must have known would never be acceptable to Leavers or even most Remainers, and certainly not the DUP, on whose support the Tories rely.

Then she postponed the vote on the deal until barely a month before we're due to leave anyway.

So if she survives tonight's confidence vote, all she has to do is muddle through or somehow frustrate or delay Parliament's "meaningful vote" in January, and we're practically home and dry!

No Deal here we come!

[meridian]

I hope you are wrong. She's doing Tory remainers no favours. We're charging rapidly towards no deal simply because she didn't prepare for it,

There is an entire DExEU department, headed by several ministers.