A Government that can’t govern. A Parliament that can’t decide . . . oh, what a toxic mess

BAD news, then, for Brenda from Bristol. She, as you may recall, was the lady interviewed by the BBC on the day in 2017 when Theresa May called an election who could barely believe her ears.

‘You’re joking!’ she said. ‘Not another one? For God’s sake. I can’t stand this. There’s too much politics going on at the moment . . .’

Well, if there was too much politics going on two years ago, I dread to think what Brenda made of the scenes in Parliament last night.

After days of mounting hysteria, which included the extraordinary drama of Tory MP Phillip Lee crossing the floor to join the Lib Dems yesterday, the Commons was thrown into tumult when MPs voted to block a No Deal Brexit and seize control of parliamentary business.

Chaos

For Boris Johnson, who has dreamed of the premiership for so long, the stakes are now unimaginably high.

Robbed of his majority, with rebel Tories stripped of the whip for defying the Government, he could be forced from office within days.

A general election, the most momentous in our lifetimes, now seems a certainty.

In effect, voters will be forced to choose between Boris Johnson and the probability of No Deal, and Jeremy Corbyn and the most extreme Left-wing Government in British history.

To outsiders, all this must look like utter chaos.

Indeed, to many of us, it appears that the choice facing Britain is the strong possibility of chaos on the one hand and the absolute certainty of it on the other.

One day, long after the dust has settled, historians will be able to identify when and where British politics went wrong.

For my part, I still think MPs should have voted for Theresa May’s much-maligned deal with the EU.

But that ship has long since sailed, leaving the initiative with Mr Johnson and his supposed strategic genius, Dominic Cummings.

We are now about to discover whether Mr Johnson’s pet Machiavelli does have a cunning plan, or if his topsecret strategy has always been a gigantic bluff.

In Westminster, some observers suggest that the PM has wanted an election all along and that this entire business has been nothing but a massive warm-up act, allowing him to present himself as champion of the people against the obstinacy of Parliament.

If so, his plan seems fraught with risk. Indeed, he still may not even get an election at all — or, at least, not on the terms he wants.

Labour MPs made clear yesterday that they will not vote for an election unless it takes place after a Brexit extension, to avoid Britain crashing out of the EU with no deal. In other words, we could find ourselves in the crazy situation whereby the Government, while professing not to want an election, tries to provoke its enemies into forcing one — only for the Opposition to walk away from a contest.

In a further twist, there is talk that the Government might move a vote of no-confidence in itself, with the intention of losing it. If that happened, one wonders whether it would be time for the Queen to step in, admit that Britain’s experiment with democracy has failed and run the whole thing herself.

Tempting as it is to take solace in black humour, the fact remains that we are in a very serious mess. We are now two-thirds of the way through our six-month Brexit extension. Have our politicians used the time wisely? The answer, I am afraid, is obvious.

Given the pressure of the exit deadline of October 31, it is hard to find a suitably grim historical parallel.

The last time things at Westminster were so fraught was probably the beginning of 1974, when Ted Heath’s Government was locked in confrontation with the miners.

The outcome then was a national energy emergency, a crisis election and an inconclusive stalemate that saw Heath fall from office and a Labour minority government take over. Whatever you think of Mr Johnson, a similar result this time around, with Jeremy Corbyn walking into No 10, would be a total catastrophe.

The other parallel, even less inspiring, is the situation between 1910 and 1914, just before World War I.

Then, as now, an insoluble deadlock in Parliament provoked all sorts of hysterical rhetoric about coups and chaos, with the Liberals trying to push through sweeping social welfare initiatives and Home Rule for Ireland, while Tory die-hards were determined to oppose even the slightest concession.

What broke the log-jam was the outbreak of war.

Perhaps some unforeseen crisis will intervene again, though a rerun of 1914 is hardly a cheerful prospect.

Even when compared with these great dramas, though, today’s chaos is in a league of its own. In effect, we have a Government that cannot govern and a Parliament that cannot agree, while all the time the Brexit stopwatch ticks on.

Something has to give, which is why an election probably has to happen.

Limbo

But what makes all this so toxic is that it confirms people’s worst fears about Britain’s politicians.

More than three years after the referendum, we are still trapped in limbo, much to the fury of the millions who voted Leave — as well as those who, like me, voted Remain but wish to honour the result.

One possible outcome is that we slide, screaming and squabbling, towards a No Deal exit on October 31. Some suggest that is what Mr Johnson has always wanted.

If so, he is taking an extraordinary gamble.

A No Deal exit would deepen the schism in the Tory Party beyond repair. And, if it goes wrong — as it might — it could destroy the Conservatives for a generation.

The only other realistic outcome, though, is a Corbyn-led government, perhaps following an election and a hung parliament. I doubt I’m alone in finding that an absolutely terrifying prospect.

In Mr Johnson’s favour, his boisterous decisiveness has undoubtedly boosted the Tories’ poll ratings from their nadir under Mrs May. Recent surveys give them a clear lead over Labour, while voters evidently vastly prefer him to Mr Corbyn. But is it enough? As election experts such as Sir John Curtice point out, the Tories’ lurch towards No Deal means they are almost certain to lose seats to the SNP in Scotland and to the Lib Dems in southern England.

Divided

That means Mr Johnson would have to win at least 20 seats from Labour merely to stand still. And, if he wants an overall majority, the Tories would have to pull much further ahead than the opinion polls suggest now.

So, where does all of that leave us?

The honest answer is that nobody really knows, which is probably the most frightening thing of all.

Still, if there is one man in Britain with the self-belief to defy the odds, it is Mr Johnson.

He was dismissed as a joke when he stood as London’s mayor; he was said to be finished when he pulled out of the Tory leadership race in June 2016; and he was ‘finished’ yet again when he resigned as Foreign Secretary two years later.

As all the world knows, the PM has always modelled himself on Sir Winston Churchill.

But even Churchill might have blinked at the challenge of uniting a bitterly divided Tory Party, fighting his way through the thicket of parliamentary opposition, negotiating with Brussels, seeing off Jeremy Corbyn and healing the wounds that have opened in British society since 2016.

Can Mr Johnson do it? You would be very brave to bet against him.

But, with Jeremy Corbyn in the opposite corner, the stakes have never been higher.

On the success of Mr Johnson’s gamble hangs not just his own political survival, but the survival of the Tory Party, the British economy and perhaps the United Kingdom itself.