"Just because you put on a seat belt, doesn't mean you have to crash the car."
That's the metaphor offered by Cabinet Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (and prominent remainer) Amber Rudd during Tuesday's cabinet meeting, where Theresa May and her senior ministers decided to pull out all of the "Project Fear" stops to try to browbeat MPs into accepting that they have three choices: Either they pass May's deal, opt for a no deal Brexit, or scrap the whole thing (which May, according to May, isn't really an option, though Parliament does have the legal authority to disregard the will of the people and unilaterally decide what's best for the UK).
And if their intention was to spook both the markets and the British people, May and her cabinet likely succeeded. Because as part of their Brexit planning, May and her ministers are calling for the reservation of ferry space for emergency supplies of food and medicine, as well as putting 3,500 armed soldiers on standby to prevent "any disruptions" when all hell breaks loose, according to the Guardian.
Much to May's chagrin, 'No Deal' has become Whitehall's "central planning assumption.'
No 10 confirmed on Tuesday that ministers would "ramp up" no-deal planning, and that the departments would be expected to make it their main priority.
"Cabinet agreed that with just over three months from our exit from the EU, we have now reached the point where we need to ramp up these preparations. This means we will now set in motion the remaining elements of our no-deal plans. Cabinet also agreed to recommend businesses ensure they are similarly prepared enacting their own no-deal plans."
In what has become a hallmark of the Brexit trainwreck, while May continued to publicly oppose holding a series of informal 'indicative' votes to gauge what kind of Brexit would be politically feasible, the BBC reported shortly after the end of the meeting that the prime minister is, in fact, planning on holding an indicative vote during the second or third week in January (around the time of May's planned Jan. 14 vote on her deal), which would be big...if true (of course, we've heard this before).
But if the BBC report is accurate, May might be setting herself up for another major political miscalculation: She's hoping that by holding the vote, MPs will realize that no one proposal has a strong plurality of support...and therefore accept the fact that her deal is the most plausible option.
The upshot of the meeting: May is going all-in on "Project Fear", hoping that charts like the one below and graphic warnings about supply shortages will eventually scare MPs into passing her deal at the last minute.
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