The latest twist in the Brexit soap opera is all over the papers this morning. Clearly following a briefing to the Lobby the papers all report that May is going to have a fourth go at getting her deal over the line (seriously?!!) by running it off against whatever emerges as the consensus from the indicative votes on Monday and if it loses (as it will almost certainly, maybe by more than last time) she will go for a general election. I've been pretty confident there wouldn't be a GE, but the odds on it in Betfair now make it a better than 50% chance (from about 33% recently). If she did do this and most Conservative MPs supported her she would get the required two thirds of Parliament.
I can see her thinking (if that's the right word for it). She's clearly not prepared to go along with anything that might emerge from the indicative votes and this could be a way of holding the party together (always her main concern) and avoiding what otherwise would be a huge split - the biggest since 1903. The thing is this would mean the Conservative Party asking for a mandate on the basis of supporting May's deal, which has been overwhelmingly rejected and which a lot of Tory MPs have execrated. Voters do not like premature elections and a lot of people would be particularly cross if one was called just when Parliament had worked out a compromise. She presumably would have another go at making it a simple 'Brexit yes or No?' election but firstly impossible to keep the election on one topic like that and second it won't be about the principle, by definition it will be about her deal versus the alternatives ranging from no deal to remain. I don't see this working out well for the Tories.
That doesn't mean this is good news for Labour. Almost certainly they will run on the basis that they will negotiate a better Labour Brexit. They will face constant questions about what that would be and they won't be able to pull off the trick they did last time of appealing simultaneously to working class leave voters in the North and middle class remain voters in the South. In the worst scenario they could lose seats in the North to the Tories and seats down south to the LDs and TiG (or whatever they are called now). They would certainly lose all their seats in Scotland - unless there's a real upset the SNP will have a clean sweep there.
Thing is the electorate is so pissed off with the entire political class that you could well have some completely unexpected outcomes. You might get a record low or record high turnout depending on how that played out. UKIP might see a strong revival, not enough to win seats I imagine but enough to reestablish itself (that would be bad news for the Tories by the way). Given all this I am amazed at how reckless May and the Cabinet appear to be but then perhaps I shouldn't be, given her record. It could be that a lot of MPs and ministers in particular are simply utterly fed up and would quite welcome losing their seats. The two big points are that given the divisions within the parties a GE is very unlikely to settle anything and secondly that the EU has to agree a long extension for this to happen - are they going to do that (given it would involve UK participation in the Euroelections)? Probably, but don't count on it.