Quote Originally Posted by Muddy Retriever View Post
Re the general election, I presume you mean they wanted to prevent a no-deal exit and ensure an extension was requested instead. But the election date was going to be on 14th October. So if they're so confident than have a general election and Labour or possibly a Labour plus others coalition would win. Then they could ask for an extension from the EU themselves. They're obviously scared that they'll lose. To be honest I'm not even sure the opposition parties will agree to an election after November 1st if the polls are still as they are at the moment.
The reason they all refused to back a vote of no confidence was because they saw it as a ploy by the government to disband parliament and then by the time the election had happened, the UK would have no-dealed by default. You mention the date, but it was my understanding that the government could change the date by a week or two to achieve this end.
Of course some of the pro-tory press seized on this to tell their readers that Jeremy Corbyn is a big chicken. I'm not surprised some people believed it, but I didn't think you'd be one of them.