Brexit delay: Halloween extension feels like the final nail in Theresa May's coffin
A second extension to Article 50 could finally kill off Theresa May's premiership as Tory MPs demand she stand down.
Friday 26 April 2019 11:22, UK
It was the weekend after Theresa May's disastrous snap general election in 2017 that former chancellor George Osborne rather brutally described the prime minister as a "dead woman walking".
Fitting then, that the EU27 have agreed to a Halloween Brexit - setting 31 October as the new deadline for the UK to leave the EU with a review point in June - given it is this Article 50 extension that could finally kill off her premiership.
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Today we begin the next chapter in the Brexit nightmare consuming her government and her party.
Under the terms of the new arrangement, the UK has another six-and-a-half months to resolve the Brexit crisis - with a break clause should the House of Commons agree a deal before then.
But the decision to delay Brexit again and commit to the European Parliament elections - unless the UK can sign off a deal by 22 May - really feels like the final nail in the coffin for a prime minister who has been almost supernatural in her ability to remain in post in the most challenging of circumstances.
Her party may not be able to formally vote her out until December, but now all the talk is over how soon she'll be gone.
Eurosceptics are extremely agitated, understandable given that the prime minister has in the past few weeks shifted from "my deal or no deal" to "my deal or long delay (with EU elections attached)".
Backbench MPs are writing letters to the chair of the influential 1922 committee, Sir Graham Brady, demanding she stand down and make way for a new leader to pick up the Brexit reins and try to solve the riddle that has confounded her party and government.
For what options does the Conservative Party now have if it wants to avoid a general election?
Mrs May has been unable to get her Brexit deal across the line, despite three attempts at passing her withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons.
The refuseniks on her party's benches - from both sides of the Leave/Remain divide - are becoming more, not less, entrenched as the Brexit chaos spirals out of control.
And while the cross-party talks with Labour on a compromise deal are continuing, both sides acknowledge privately that reaching a deal is going to be very tough with those in her cabinet publicly speaking out against the sort of customs union Brexit deal that Labour want.
Plan A has all but collapsed and Plan B is pretty shaky.
Plan C involves holding so-called indicative votes in parliament, with the promise of following through on that plan to see if MPs can instruct the government on how to proceed.
But it would surely be impossible for Mrs May to accept a customs union option from parliament if she has conducted those talks and ruled it out.
It can't have been easy for the prime minster to come to Brussels to beg for another Article 50 extension and then have to accept whatever she could get.
But dealing with those 27 EU leaders was the easy bit in all of this for Mrs May.
The real nightmare begins on Thursday when she returns to parliament to tell her fuming party that the UK could be in the EU for a lot longer yet.
She's pressing on with Plan A and B for the time being, but they will be drawing up their own plan - without her in it.