The Big Vote in the UK

Today (15th Jan, 2019) the UK parliament voted on May's proposed Brexit plan and the Prime Minister, May, suffered an enormous and almost humiliating defeat by 24 to 600 for the Baron amendment and 202 to 432 for her Brexit deal. Before the vote, there was a debate held indicating that May had had a bad chance to win this vote since a significantly greater proportion of the MPs (who spoke during the debate) opposed the plan. As before, May this time did not only face the opposition from her opposite parties including Labour Party, Scottish National Party and others, she also faced the opposition from her own party. I was too optimistic about her situation that I overestimated the chance of the Parliament passing her proposed plan. During the debate, it was disappointing to see that almost no one from the opposition proposed anything specifically useful to amend the plan and make the plan better. However, there were some bold arguments and the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, triggered a vote of no confidence to attempt to force a general election. 

  

At the moment, the UK Prime Minister, May, has to work hard to restore the support for her in the Parliament, especially from her own party before the no confidence vote. May cannot afford another defeat in the Parliament and I expect she might consider resigning if she suffers another defeat in the Parliament even after surviving the no confidence vote. How like does May survive the no confidence vote? To be honest, under such circumstance, I do not think that she has a good chance to survive the vote, maybe half to half. Her party may largely support May in the no confidence vote, not because they would like to support her as their party leader or the Prime Minister, but because the Tory party would not go to the election this early. If the Tory party is largely confident that they can still win a general election at this moment (they are actually leading the polls), then the chance of May being voted out can be very significant. If May cannot survive the no confidence vote, then who will be the next Prime Minister. If the Labour Party wins, the Prime Minister is very likely to be Jeremy Corbyn. However, if the Conservative party wins, the answer is not very clear right now. 

  

When the UK has a new Prime Minister, how will he or she make his or her Brexit plan? And how well is he or she going to do the work relating to Brexit? The Brexit problem is an extremely difficult and complicated problem that the UK government and the EU government have to estimate the economic impacts from many different aspects and weight the benefits and the costs as well as many other impacts including political and national security measures. Being the UK Prime Minister is an extremely challenging job, may be not easier than being a war time Prime Minister. Towards the Brexit issue, the UK is very divided, even the opposition against May's proposed Brexit deal is divided within them as well.