There’ll be no second chance for Leavers

Brexit MPS have just nine days to save their project by forcing the no-deal outcome voters want

The dam has burst. Our Conservative Prime Minister has thrown herself at the feet of a reconstituted Marxist to save her dismal Withdrawal Agreement. The Tory grass roots are engulfed in a forest fire of fury, with many cutting up their membership cards. And irked voters like me are consoling themselves with impotent fantasies of scrawling “Brexit Betrayal” on their ballot cards at the early general election that now appears inevitable.

The Conservatives have nine days left to save themselves from political annihilation. They still have time to oust the PM, and fulfil their promise to lead this country out of the EU by spring. The 14 Cabinet members who

favour a no-deal exit should resign en masse and try to install a caretaker Brexiteer successor in a last-ditch effort to rip the rug from under the PM. After all, she has snubbed them in favour of crushing down the little soft cartilage left in her dreadful Brexit deal, to squeeze it through Parliament with the help of the hard-left. Backbench Brexiteers can also take decisive action. Perhaps they might go on parliamentary strike, refusing to vote through any government legislation – effectively paralysing No 10’s ability to get anything done, until Theresa May resigns.

These might sound like extreme, final-resort tactics, but there is mounting evidence that much of the population would back MPS making one final, dramatic heave for no deal. A Yougov survey has found that every English and Welsh region outside of the M25 is happy to leave the EU without a deal if Britain cannot reach an agreement with Brussels next week. A survey commissioned for

The Telegraph found that 46 per cent favour exiting on WTO terms.

Instead, Brexiteers are letting down millions of Leavers. ERG MPS, who last week abandoned their principles to back the Withdrawal Agreement, have now sunk into a self-lacerating sadness. And so-called “no-dealers” in the Cabinet are too entombed in their own personal plots to become the next leader that they can’t see the sun is perilously close to setting on a decade of Conservative government.

I fear that both groups have made a strategic miscalculation. They believe that the least bad option now is to let Mrs May absorb the humiliation of negotiating an extension, before ousting her and electing a Brexiteer in a leadership contest. The logic goes that with a strong Leaver at the helm pursuing a “managed no deal”, the Tories can win a majority and a renewed mandate to leave the EU.

Although I ardently wish this could happen, I do not think it will. Like the Remainers, Leavers are in danger of overlooking the most basic lesson of Brexit: in politics there is no second chance to “get the right outcome”. Try and turn back the clock, and you will be flattened by the brute force of the present day.

In the election that will inevitably follow a long extension, the Tories will reap the whirlwind of their abject failure. Some polling suggests Labour is now ahead of the Conservatives. As they continue to lose London seats, disillusionment in the Leaver heartlands will hurt Tory ambitions to break into the Midlands and the North. Tony Blair lost 47 seats in the election that followed the weapons of mass destruction debacle. How many will the Tories haemorrhage in the wake of utterly botching Brexit?

It is also significant that, even though a leadership contest is imminent, Tory members are bailing. Their inability to get excited about the party post-may offers a raw insight into the current psychological state of Conservative Party voters.

The Brexiteers’ lack of stomach to fight for a no-deal Brexit, despite the high stakes, is both catastrophic and unsurprising. The ERG may be ideological optimists, but they are tactical pessimists. The Cabinet’s centrists are also dulled to numbness with caution. In “biding their time”, they have overlooked how easily rigid strategies can be sabotaged by more agile and creative opponents. These will surely now include a new Brexit party, as well as Remainers who will use the Brexit delay to finally kill the project.

Furthermore, the multistoried arrogance of an establishment party thinking they can win an election after losing the Brexit battle will only further fuel voter hunger for radical political change.