Philip Johnston

If talks with Labour fail, a long extension is now the best bet for Brexiteers to find a successor to the PM

There I was trying to think of an apposite literary or cinematic analogy for the current Brexit fiasco when up popped The Caine Mutiny on TV recently. This 1954 film based on a Herman Wouk novel stars Humphrey Bogart as a US Navy warship captain relieved of his command by junior officers who question his judgment.

Captain Queeg had been behaving erratically for a while; but when the USS Caine runs into a Pacific typhoon, his crew fears he will lead them to disaster. His second-in-command urges the captain to reverse course into the wind but Queeg freezes and is unable to make a decision. He is confined to his quarters, whereupon the ship rides out the storm and returns to port – only for the junior officers to be court-martialled for mutiny. They are acquitted when it becomes apparent during the trial that Captain Queeg was, indeed, not fit to command.

In the context of Brexit, Theresa May is Captain Queeg. She should have been relieved a long time ago but her officers – aka the Cabinet – were unwilling to act even as she steered the ship of state on to the rocks where

it is now stuck fast. How to get it off? The Cabinet held a marathon meeting yesterday and even though most ministers wanted to leave without a deal next week and get this saga over and done with, she overrode them and now proposes to consort with the enemy in an effort to find a safe haven.

A cross-party process that might have worked when she took office nearly three years ago – and was inevitable after she lost her parliamentary majority in 2017 – now risks blowing the Conservative Party to pieces. Somewhat late in the day, Mrs May is trying to change the arithmetic in Parliament, not through an election but by seeking an temporary alliance with the Labour Party in what would amount to an informal unity government. At least that would wrest control from the backbenchers who have staged a constitutional coup d’etat by taking over the day-to-day business of the Commons.

She wants Jeremy Corbyn to get her off the hook and he won’t, certainly not without exacting a price that will destroy the Tories. He will ask for a customs union and single market membership and, possibly, a second referendum – all of which are opposed by scores of Tory MPS. How can she accept what he is likely to propose?

We are now deep into the blame game: can the Government pin responsibility for this debacle on Labour? The short answer is no; and Mr Corbyn will doubtless be advised by his team to take a very long spoon to talks with the Prime Minister. In the inevitable absence of an agreement between the two leaders, Mrs May is prepared to allow indicative votes on different options – but we have had 12 of these already and every one has fallen.

That is why, as she said, there would have to be Labour support for any alternative; but why would Corbyn now throw her a lifeline?

Mrs May has not given up entirely on her Withdrawal Agreement; but even if it comes back for a fourth outing it will lose because the DUP will not accept it for as long as it contains the Northern Ireland protocol, or backstop, because their objections are not concerned with trading relations but with the Union. Assurances that the backstop is merely an insurance policy and may never be used cut no ice in the siege mentality of Ulster politics. Such promises are simply not believed.

Before yesterday’s Cabinet, there had been some talk of linking another meaningful vote to a motion of confidence, a device used by John Major in 1993 to get the Maastricht Treaty Bill through Parliament. But this is no longer possible after the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (FTPA) removed the Prime Minister’s prerogative to ask the Queen for a dissolution.

Some MPS blame this measure for Parliament’s current travails. But it is by no means clear that Mrs May, even if she had the power, would have sought a dissolution because an election is fraught with difficulty for the Conservatives, not the least of which is what to put in a manifesto about Brexit that the party could rally around.

In any case, the House had the chance a few months ago under the FTPA to bring the Government down but failed to do so. The legislation is not really an insuperable barrier to an election: should MPS want one they can vote for one. At the moment, though, an election carries so many perils for the two main parties that they are reluctant to take the jump and the Government is not going to push them.

However, if there is no agreement between the Government and Labour – and since no deal has been unequivocally ruled out – what then? Assuming the EU agrees, a longer extension will be necessary which would necessitate the UK holding elections to the European Parliament in June.

However humiliating this might be, this now seems the best option for Brexiteers rather than the cobbled-together monstrosity that is likely to emerge from the two-party process. It would give time for Mrs May to quit and a new Tory leader to be installed in Number 10.

He or she will want a mandate for whatever form of Brexit the Conservatives have finally agreed on; and with the vast majority of Tory MPS and party activists opposed to a customs union or EEA membership, reaching an agreed position might be less difficult that it currently appears.

Of course, some Tories will be unable to live with this and will join the new Change UK party, but casualties are inevitable, as has been seen this week with Nick Boles. If there is an election, Labour will probably put a second referendum in its manifesto and that might, in turn, encourage the Conservatives to do likewise to avoid losing Remainer Tory voters.

So under this scenario we would end up with a second referendum come what may – either voted through by the putschists on the backbenches or implemented by a new government after an election. One thing is certain: the captain who brought the country to this pretty pass should have been frogmarched off the bridge long ago.