May goes back to Brussels...

After a busy night in Parliament, some public despair for Remainers (for now),after a couple of delaying or wrecking amendments were defeated. One amendment urging the Government to reject no deal was passed. So was a Government-sponsored one urging the PM to return to Brussels to renegotiate the backstop. Curiously, as a number of commentators pointed out, this contradicted the PM's earlier claim that no further dealing was possible. The mugs don't really understand pragmatic politics or negotiation and were also bleating (C4 and Newsnight), that the EU had rejected any chance to renegotiate, so it was all pointless, ignoring the recent wobbling over them having to install a hard border if no deal. EU speaks as last word/revealed truth/only sensible option etc.So:

MPs have voted for a fantasy. It’s an indictment of our entire political class

J. Freedland is left with a consoling fantasy of his own, that one day the truth will come out at a Chilcott -style public enquiry. It will uncover the serial lies told during the campaign (the bus is the main one, of course):

Almost everyone involved, from both main parties, showed themselves to be immersed in delusion, trading fantasies and absurdities, each one refusing to meet reality’s eye, let alone tackle it head on...Theresa May had repeated endlessly, and for weeks, that her deal was the only deal on offer. Yet there she was, standing at the despatch box urging MPs to vote for an amendment that trashes that very same deal...First, it’s really no great achievement to get MPs to agree that they’d like the good bits of a deal but don’t want to swallow the bad bits [notquite trashing the whole deal then]: yes to the sugar, no to the pill. The Tories have united around a position that says they’d like the benefits of the withdrawal agreement, without paying all the costs [sounds perfectly sensible tome]...It’s the familiar Brexit delusion, which Brussels took all of six minutes to crush, by declaring – for the millionth time – that “the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.” 

Freedland does have some good points to make:

it was that same logic that saw them [Leavers]  win the referendum itself. Their message back then boiled down to: do you want to stay in the European Union, with all its concrete, visible flaws, or would you like “alternative arrangements”? What we’ve all learned since is that the moment an “alternative” becomes real, it loses its all-things-to-all-people appeal.

Quite right -- but applicable to all political policies,a fortiori to the Remainers, who cannot even develop any 'real' intentions because they are entirely negative and conservative. Freedland thinks history will absolve him -- and the delayers:

[any future enquiry will surely forgive]  the handful of MPs who are using every parliamentary wile they can to stop the country from slamming into the iceberg. The names Grieve, Cooper, Boles and others may earn themselves an admiring footnote in the report that will eventually come.

Freedland is especially venomous to the 14 Labour MPs who voted for the amendments,despite a 3-line whip:

14 Labour rebels ... concluded that even a slight delay to Brexit [who is he kidding]  – just a few months – poses more of a threat to their constituents than a crash-out that could see shortages of food and medicine, with more warnings along those lines coming this morning from the leader of a major hospitals group. The future public inquiry into this horror show will damn those 14 especially.

Interestingly, there is a report in the Times that Boles is coming under fire from his constituency and risks deselectio.

Meanwhile, el Grunida carries extracts from reports of the vote in European newspapers. They seem to grasp the politics a bit more accurately, but also look a bit panicky:

Theresa May is now risking a major showdown with the EU and increasing the danger of a damaging no-deal departure,” writes Le Monde’s London correspondent, Philippe Bernard....“As risky as it is, she intends to run down the clock so as to force the EU27 into making concessions before 29 March. And then, if necessary, blame the EU – an easy scapegoat – for eventual failure.”... Björn Finke in the Süddeutsche Zeitung says...May’s weakness is dangerous, for Britain and for the rest of the EU.”...It is true that this “worries the Europeans”, Vidal-Folch [of El Pais] says. “That’s why they’re drawing up contingency plans, which only remind them of the losses ahead. But those who’ll suffer the most damage are the British themselves....NRC Handelsblad in the Netherlands is equally brutal. “To save her Brexit deal, avoid a split in her party and retain the minimum of control a prime minister needs, May aims to provoke a conflict with the EU,”...Libération, France’s leftwing daily, detects a familiar British strategy behind Tuesday evening’s “utterly absurd” scenes in the Commons. “From now till mid-February, aided by the Eurosceptic press, she can deploy the classic British rhetoric: those intransigent, arrogant Europeans are refusing to give us what we want...“Then she can say, ‘I tried, but this is the only deal on the table.’ She is counting on fear of a no deal to win MPs round. It’s a very big gamble, and it could backfire, lamentably.”