Kettle gets close

Nearly adequate complexity is demonstrated by M (banging on and on) Kettle in el gurdino today. The situation is more difficult than was the Good Friday agreement, he says, and in a typical liberal Grauniad way bemoans the absence of leaders as good as Paisley and McGuinness: 'Unlike in Northern Ireland’s, ours is a conflict which no leader has won the authority to try to resolve by consensus.'

More generally, he summarises some results of recent polling, which, anong other things, nmust  offer bad news for PV supporters:

There is almost no consensus among voters about what should happen now....n his keynote address, the political scientist John Curtice argued that the practical problem with Brexit is that there is very little middle ground on which the two sides can make trades...it is not just the Commons that dislikes her [May's] deal. Twice as many voters oppose it as support it, though often for wildly different reasons...However, none of the other alternatives is popular either. Most remainers continue to support remaining, hence their backing for a second referendum. Most leavers, though, still want to leave, with the largest group of them wanting to leave even without a deal.... For a proportion of leavers, a renegotiation is seen as the second-best option – but remainers are suspicious of that; they see going back to Brussels as a hard-Brexit ploy. The much-touted second referendum option falls into the same divide. With opinion among Tory voters now so emphatically in the leave camp, there is little incentive for May to move in the direction of a softer Brexit, let alone a second vote.

However:

Matt Singh of Number Cruncher Politics argues, on the basis of NCP’s own polling, that May’s deal is in fact the closest thing to a consensus among public opinion. At first sight, this is a weird claim, since May’s deal is far less popular in Singh’s poll than either remaining in the EU or leaving with no deal. However, when people are asked if these other outcomes might be personally acceptable to them, May’s deal vaults into a narrow lead.

Kettle thinks Brexiteers might flake -- but there is a quiet yearning in his own writing:

The determination of MPs like Yvette Cooper and Nick Boles to prevent no deal may now be alarming hard-Brexit Tories who fear the process will be delayed and softened. Some of them may decide they could live with a form of May’s deal after all. If she is able to cobble together a majority, it is possible that public opinion, exhausted by Brexit, might also fall into line...The most obvious accommodation on Brexit – a soft exit along Norway lines – might have succeeded if David Cameron had decided to stay, if May had embraced it early on, or if Jeremy Corbyn had been a different kind of Labour leader. But those chances have come and gone. One of the striking aspects of the Brexit standoff since 2016 is not just the absence of a middle ground, but the absence of political leaders who speak for it.

I don't think they will be able to stand theheat much longer