They’ve deserted the PM in her hour of need

The great hymn Abide With Me, well known to our church-going Prime Minister, includes the line ‘ Change and decay in all around I see’. Theresa May could be forgiven for thinking that those words sum up the behaviour of Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and heidi Allen.

For there had never been any hope of the Treacherous Trio ‘abiding’ with her as she approached the denouement of her Brexit negotiations.

The three women’s quarrel is not personally with Mrs May, who they respect as only the second woman to be British prime minister and who has done a vast amount to help other women become Conservative MPs.

No, their nemeses are the anti-Brussels ultras in the european Research Group. Does this split mean the Conservative Party is now going to disintegrate? Or is it a minor avalanche that will be soon forgotten?

No one can know for sure, and anyone who claims to is deluded.

But the angry reaction to this trio’s treacherous behaviour should act as a warning to other Conservative MPs that now is not the moment for self-indulgent gestures.

When the Americans signed their Declaration of Independence in 1776, Benjamin Franklin, one of the country’s founding fathers, remarked to a colleague: ‘ We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.’

The same applies to the British political establishment with the country on the cusp of attaining independence from the EU.

We elect MPs so they can perform, on our behalf, the task of passing legislation and keeping a close eye on ministers.

Soubry, Wollaston and Allen have failed in their duty by abandoning the Tory Party for some ill- defined new grouping.

The Conservatives are responsible for enacting Brexit. The three women were elected by voters to get that achieved.

By resigning, they have betrayed their electorate and will not be forgiven if the Brexit process ends in failure.

Of course, the risk of resignations has been something the PM has been aware of for some time. That’s why she tried to bolster her Commons base by calling a general election in 2017 in the hope – forlorn as it turned out – to get a much larger Parliamentary majority which would enable her to ride roughshod over rebels in her own ranks.

Perfection is never attainable in politics. even compromise is sometimes hard to reach.

That said, Mrs May’s instinctive caution and the delicacy of the talks she is conducting have led many Tory MPs to lose patience with her. Although the Three Amigos, as they’ve been dubbed, have now left, some of the former backbench colleagues remain deeply frustrated.

however, if you ask them who could do a better job as prime minister, and get Brexit through the Commons, a perplexed silence tends to fall.

Negotiating with Brussels is hell, as David Cameron demonstrated when he tried, before the referendum, to renegotiate the terms of our membership.

To leave the EU on acceptable and orderly terms requires a degree of brinkmanship in the negotiations, or Brussels will walk all over us.

So, to take the bargaining chip of No Deal off the table now would be to throw in our hand. That threat has to remain, so the necessary political will is applied to solving the Irish backstop problem.

The Prime Minister is not always good at recruiting the help she needs, but she did, to her credit, recruit Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General. he is a lawyer who understands how international treaties work. he also possesses the robust and independent judgment needed to win the confidence both of his Parliamentary colleagues and of those with whom he is negotiating.

SOUBRY, Wollaston and Allen would have done better if they had listened to him rather than jump ship. It is quite possible, even likely, that a few more Tory MPs will follow them.

But in the end, the great majority yearn to be persuaded that Mrs May has got a deal they can vote for. They do not want to wander off into the wilderness, being told as they go how heroic they are being, and then never being heard of again.

I believe that Theresa May could be on the brink of victory.

It is a mark of Soubry, Wollaston and Allen’s naivety that they should have chosen this moment to join their fortunes with a motley band of refugees fleeing persecution at the hands of the Corbyn Labour Party.