Where do Crown Dependencies fit in to this mess?
Can anyone more knowledgeable than me point me to some useful info?
Errr... It's probably good that you have a decent stockpile...
Sorry to be flippant but honestly, I'm guessing civil service will have a contingency for remote area and it'll have some sort of full on military involvement for practical reasons because as you say, you are so far down the food chain in political terms as well as supply lines. Which would probably mean total radio silence until it has to be engaged to prevent panic.
So TM cannot feasibly resign until the SI moving the "crash out" date has been completed as we would, effectively, be without a leader of the government and only the government are able to table an SI?
The timetable is as such that if they tried to oust her, the rules mean she would still be PM until close to the 12th. And yes since there needs to be SIs put forward early next week, that needs to be sorted first.
I think there are a couple of days left where she could be removed to get a new PM before the twelfth but only after the Si is complete. The problem is then who replaces her. Brexiteers will not want a remain MP and vice versa so an annointment of a new leader is unlikely and a Tory election contest and everything needed to prevent a 12th April crash out are potentially unfeasible. (but then this is the Tory party so who knows).
Practically speaking, if the Cabinet do wish to avoid no deal, it pretty much does leave Liddington as the de facto only option, propping up May for now. And even that will only be because frankly things are that dire and both Remainers and Brexiteers think she's more or less a danger to them and the country. As in, she's pretty much been forcefully been removed due to her going Colonel Kurtz on them. She doesn't have the support of the backbench (we know Brady’s been to visit) and she doesn't have support of Cabinet as they would have spoken today if they did.
All day even ultra loyalists like Rory Stewart and Kwasi Kwertang have been going off script spouting opinions of what she should do, whilst just about holding the government line.
Quite honestly especially after her performance at the EU summit and in recent days, that could well be where we are at. The EU would not openly be leaking stuff about how they had to make up plan B for her, if it wasn't close to that stage. It'd be too dangerous for them to undermine her in that way. It's clear they have been trying to actively prop her up for a couple of weeks.
If the Cabinet are now simply trying to hold the Tory party together and prevent no deal, I'm not sure it would look or feel much different.
I do think that the Cabinet is likely to have no real ultimately committed No Dealers at this point, despite what they might say as if they were they would have already resigned. The thing that's kept them in government to this point, to all intents and purposes, has essentially been a united goal to prevent no deal and to keep the party together despite their huge differences.
Personal ambition would dictate that if they were committed no dealers they'd have marked themselves as that by now, to the rest of the party. These are the Compromise Candidates. They are not the hardliners.
I could be reading it wrong, but I can't rationally logic out alternative explanations.
The writing is on the wall, even for May. Simply because she has no plan at all and is obviously now completely out of her depth and struggling.
It's desparate and very worrying.