Only Boris can close this Pandora’s Box

IT is said bad things happen in threes.

In that case, Boris Johnson must have slept very uneasily indeed last night.

For on a tumultuous day in Westminster, the Prime Minister suffered two severe blows in rapid succession.

First, Phillip Lee, a long dissatisfied but little-known ex-prisons minister, defected to the Lib Dems, wiping out the Tories’ gossamer-thin majority.

Then, within hours, Mr Johnson’s plan to deliver Brexit was sabotaged by recalcitrant Remainers – spearheaded by Labour and, scandalously, 21 insurgents.

Abetted by the disgracefully biased Speaker John Bercow (who else!), the militants momentously seized control of the Commons order paper. One didn’t need clairvoyance to predict their victory.

The Speaker, a shameless publicity seeker with a stratospheric ego, has repeatedly – and hypocritically – set fire to centuriesold Parliamentary procedure to stymie leaving the EU.

Today, the alliance – backed by Jeremy Corbyn, who sidelined his lifelong Euroscepticism for political expediency – will hammer a new nail into the Brexit coffin.

In what promises to be a titanic Commons showdown, they will try to pass a law rendering it illegal for the Government to quit with No Deal on October 31. No one will become rich betting on them succeeding.

Despite striving for a workable deal, Mr Johnson is being boxed in by intractable Remain hardliners in his party.

Preserving the threat of walking away from the table gave No 10 enormous clout in talks to eke concessions from Brussels. Destroying this incentive ties the PM’s hands.

Moreover, the opportunistic legislation contains an alarming hidden horror.

If passed, the Government would be forced to accept any Brexit extension the EU proposes. One year, five years… who knows? And for that dubious pleasure, we would be obliged to pay £1 billion a month. Britain would be diminished and humiliated, trapped in limbo at the whim of Brussels’s intransigent ideologues. Little wonder it has been dubbed the ‘Surrender Bill’. Do the Tory rebels really want to be yoked to the EU in perpetuity?

In truth, yes. While duplicitously paying lip service to the winning majority of 17.4 million people eager for the UK to step confidently out into the world, the MPs secretly desire to kill off Brexit.

For handing legislative control to Labour, the insurgents will be sacked – ending their political careers.

It is a harsh punishment. And it risks splitting the party and further undermining Mr Johnson’s potency in Parliament. But by aiding a Government defeat, they opened Pandora’s Box.

Now the reeling Prime Minister will seek to force a snap election. It is a huge gamble. Indeed, the stakes could not be higher.

Just weeks after striding triumphantly into Downing Street, he could be turfed out – the shortest-serving occupant.

Yes, his popularity has soared, and his schools, crime and health policies are attractive. Still, he’ll need every ounce of his campaigning brilliance to keep Mr Corbyn and his crankish band of Marxists and anti-Semites out of Downing Street.

Yet after risibly accusing Mr Johnson of being a dictator – and begging for an election for two years – is the Labour leader running scared of a democratic election? Certainly, his MPs are unnerved by the public’s loathing of their leader.

But an election may be the only way to break the excruciating Brexit deadlock.

Fuelled by narcissism and arrogance on all sides, this zombie Parliament has failed miserably. By stubbornly refusing to carry out the electorate’s instructions, they have been found badly wanting.

Britain cannot be marooned any longer. Mr Johnson’s call for an election is the one way out of this quagmire.