The thing is, if they are "tunneling", they are getting down into semantics. As detailed as where the comma goes in a sentence, genuinely. So Johnson offered something on Thursday that was a massive concession - and what they will be doing now is a face-saving exercise with the language. Whatever said concession was, had May tried it, she'd have lost by 500 votes. It's a ludicrous situation. And sure, disagreement on the semantics could unsettle it at the death.
When Barnier says "untested", that can mean loads of things. The obvious: Task Force 50 haven't run it through a full gamut of scenarios. Or, there is no current equivalent elsewhere and everyone is taking a big gamble.
Johnson (and the EU) need only to get this over the line and in all likelihood, they've got 14 months + inevitable implementation period extension (24 more months) to get into the real detail. And of course, we will be well into the 37th month of that before a FEP takes shape.
Corbyn knows this too. Genuinely, before Jan - Feb 2019 no Party had any true idea of no deal Exit impact, and then when they did, they all wet the bed. If you read the Hansard scripts prior to the first votes, it's amazing how ill informed on the fundamentals the House was. For Corbyn, he knows with the sub-35 vote, he has a potential domestic agenda to make serious in roads into the Tory vote, maybe even get into small majority territory. Whip his MPs into an accidental no deal chain of events (where Johnson then scuppers an A50 extension) and it's chaos. I think he'll be incredibly shrewd and allow a free vote.
That's why you've got even Rees-Mogg now he's at the PM's top table talking about "necessary concessions" because other than perhaps 20? Or so complete zealots, your mutually assured destruction types, no one who has seen the info can even contemplate a no deal. All the global market data says we are weeks / months from another big crash. A bad no deal fall-out and that's the economy gone in several european states.
