A second referendum with no Leave option would I suspect be political suicide for whoever organized it.
Instead, the referendum should have a Leave option - a specific Leave option. Not an amorphous, everyone-can-think-it's-whatever-they-want option, but a concrete, well-defined, specific option. That option would almost certainly lose, since all the Remain people would vote against it, and so would many of the people who want some other flavor of Leave.
The problem is that there are several different flavors of Leave: There's hard Brexit, and the customs union, and May's deal, and maybe one or two others. None of them has a majority, either in Parliament or among the voters. But I'm not sure that Remain has a majority, either (it didn't in the referendum, and at least in Parliament, there's a feeling that remaining in the end will be regarded as a betrayal of the referendum).
Then there's the problem that May seems to feel that the most urgent task at the moment is not cleaning up this mess, but rather keeping Corbyn out of the PM position.
All this makes it almost impossible to find a way forward. However, I would say that May's deal is dead, no matter how many times she keeps trying to bring it up for a vote in Parliament. And Parliament seems to be indicating that it will take the reins out of May's hands rather than permitting her to run them (willingly or not) into a hard Brexit. The EU seems to be against the idea of perpetual delay (though it remains to be seen if they will blink when push comes to shove). That leaves revoking Article 50 or a customs union as the only options available (unless the EU blinks and keeps blinking, or unless Parliament is willing to let May do a hard Brexit).
Or so it seems to me. In this mess of a situation, who knows whether I'm right...
I'm curious that you say "May's deal is dead" but then say that a customs union (presumably tacked on to May's deal) remains an option. Surely they're effectively the same thing? May's WA already leads to a customs union in practice, it's just evasive about coming out and saying so. Maybe a ref on WA+CU-explicit versus WTO is what's needed, but let's be honest, they're never ever going to run that one.
Maybe a solid kicking in the May elections (EU and local) will concentrate minds a bit, but I'm not hopeful. I can easily see both main parties disintegrating soon, at which point we're really off to the races.
I said that May's deal (the WA) is dead because of the degree to which it has been rejected in Parliament. I said customs union as a possibility in terms of CU minus the non-CU parts of the WA, that is, something rather distinct from the WA. I said it remained as an option because I didn't know enough to rule it out.
Now, you could be right that either May (or her successor) would never be floated as an option. Or it could be that it is not possible to get an agreement on those parameters (CU minus the rest of the WA) with the EU. Both those could be perfectly valid reasons this would never fly. I was just trying to list the possibilities, and rule out the ones that looked to me like they were dead.
> I can easily see both main parties disintegrating soon
Parties can disintegrate when they aren't well aligned with what becomes the dominant issue of the day. This looks to me exactly like what's happening in the UK, especially with the Tories. But maybe new parties that actually correspond to positions on Brexit would be better than the incredible muddle that currently exists...
Instead, the referendum should have a Leave option - a specific Leave option. Not an amorphous, everyone-can-think-it's-whatever-they-want option, but a concrete, well-defined, specific option. That option would almost certainly lose, since all the Remain people would vote against it, and so would many of the people who want some other flavor of Leave.
The problem is that there are several different flavors of Leave: There's hard Brexit, and the customs union, and May's deal, and maybe one or two others. None of them has a majority, either in Parliament or among the voters. But I'm not sure that Remain has a majority, either (it didn't in the referendum, and at least in Parliament, there's a feeling that remaining in the end will be regarded as a betrayal of the referendum).
Then there's the problem that May seems to feel that the most urgent task at the moment is not cleaning up this mess, but rather keeping Corbyn out of the PM position.
All this makes it almost impossible to find a way forward. However, I would say that May's deal is dead, no matter how many times she keeps trying to bring it up for a vote in Parliament. And Parliament seems to be indicating that it will take the reins out of May's hands rather than permitting her to run them (willingly or not) into a hard Brexit. The EU seems to be against the idea of perpetual delay (though it remains to be seen if they will blink when push comes to shove). That leaves revoking Article 50 or a customs union as the only options available (unless the EU blinks and keeps blinking, or unless Parliament is willing to let May do a hard Brexit).
Or so it seems to me. In this mess of a situation, who knows whether I'm right...