Stephen Glover

THERESA May’s statement in the Commons yesterday has been described as a surrender or a U-turn or a humiliation.

The woman who has repeatedly declared that Britain will leave the EU on March 29 was forced to concede that we may, after all, extricate ourselves three months later. Some will question whether we will ever get out. I certainly do.

So it is very tempting to mark this down as one more mistake by the Prime Minister to add to the many errors of which she has undoubtedly been guilty during the whole lamentable Brexit process.

Rampant

But then we must ask: what else could she have done if she wants, as she obviously does, to keep the Government in one piece? She was put in an impossible situation by insurgent Remainer ministers who threatened to resign unless she took No Deal off the table and postponed the departure date.

In this I believe the impatient rebel ministers were much mistaken. Of course they are right to be frightened of No Deal, even though one may wonder whether rampant scare stories are not being grossly overdone.

But neither Mrs May nor Parliament was ever going to allow No Deal. It was a necessary fiction — its sole purpose to nudge the EU into making last-minute concessions over the so-called Backstop.

A good comparison is Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent. Our enemies can be almost certain that no British PM would ever dare use it; but not entirely so. All that is needed for it to be effective is one per cent of doubt.

The rebellious ministers — Amber Rudd, Greg Clark, David Gauke — and those further down the food chain have destroyed the tiny sliver of doubt that might have been sufficient to persuade Brussels that Britain might, just might, leave without a deal, which is an outcome the EU certainly doesn’t want.

Now a vote is scheduled for March 13 which will establish what we all knew but should not be declared in absolute terms — namely that there is a strong majority in the Commons against No Deal.

And once that position has been needlessly clarified to the satisfaction of Jean- Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk and the rest, another vote would follow which would, if passed, as seems probable, keep us in the EU for three more months.

And what exactly will be achieved by that? What miraculous solutions to intractable problems are likely to emerge? None, of course. It’s true that Mrs May yesterday did not rule out No Deal at the end of an extension period, but Brussels now knows the Government does not have the heart for it.

It seems very likely that during these three months the will to leave the EU would wither still further, while the arguments in favour of a ‘ People’s Vote’ would strengthen, supported with ever increasing enthusiasm by the Labour Front Bench, now that it has cynically embraced the cause.

How they must be smirking in Brussels! Such leverage as we had has been destroyed by Remainer ministers who insisted on making clear what should have been left in doubt. Meanwhile, we may find ourselves in a kind of limbo, which I suspect would act as a bridge to our staying in the EU.

These rebellious Remainer ministers have proved themselves far more deadly in ambushing and suborning the Prime Minister than their noisy Brexiteer counterparts.

Boris Johnson, David Davis and Dominic Raab flounced out of the Cabinet and withdrew grandiloquently from the field of battle. Beady- eyed Remainers stayed and fought — and have succeeded in bending Mrs May to their will.

Except that there is one last chance for us to leave the EU and honour the democratic vote of 17.4 million people which took place on — how long ago it seems! — June 23, 2016.

Knowledgeable pundits are already prophesying that when Mrs May’s dog- eared deal returns to the Commons on March 12, it will again be resoundingly defeated.

Possibly a few bells and whistles will be added to it as a result of the exertions of Geoffrey Cox, the orotund attorneygeneral, and Steve Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, during their continuing talks with EU panjandrums in Brussels.

But whether a cast- iron, legally impregnable codicil will be agreed that demonstrates to all concerned that we can’t be kept in a Backstop arrangement and the Customs Union against our will — well, that may be doubted.

As I have said, now that the threat of No Deal is about to be formally removed from the table, such willingness as Brussels may have had to be accommodating could vanish.

Purist

still

So when the vote takes place in less than two weeks’ time, it may be that what is on offer doesn’t appear much more enticing to purist Brexiteers than it did when the Government experienced the greatest defeat ever in parliamentary history in the middle of January.

The initial reaction of the Brexiteers to Mrs May’s volteface has hardly been encouraging. Jacob Rees-Mogg (who perhaps fittingly was performing in front of a rapturous audience last night at the London Palladium) has muttered of a plot ‘to stop Brexit’.

Meanwhile, in today’s Mail, former Brexit secretary David Davis uses uncharacteristically strong language to accuse the PM of ‘capitulating to blackmail’ by Tory Remainers.

And yet despite these inauspicious signs, I hope and I pray that the Brexiteers, some of whom I admire, will swallow their reservations in the name of pragmatism. The March 12 vote will almost certainly be their last opportunity to achieve Brexit in any shape or form.

Of course Mrs May’s deal is badly flawed. Without any doubt it offers less than the clean break for which many of us yearned following the referendum result.

Betrayed

On the other hand, it would unequivocally take us out of the EU, and give us control over our fishing, our farming, our borders and our trade policy. Ultimately, we would escape the long hand of the European Court.

If you had told any of these disgruntled Brexiteers five or ten years ago that such an outcome might be achievable, they would have grabbed it incredulously with both hands.

The day after Britons voted to get out of the EU, I suggested to a friend who is a prominent Brexiteer that the political class would never let us leave.

He agreed — and added that democracy would be betrayed if the vote wasn’t honoured, though at least the whole episode would deliver a shock to those who rule over us.

I’m not sure how shocked they would be to get their way. They’re used to it, after all. But it’s now clear that those intimations of a stitch-up were well-founded.

And now it really is five minutes to midnight. Battered, brave — and, let’s be honest, flawed like her deal — Mrs May is still trying to honour the wishes of those who voted for Brexit because she believes in the democratic ideal.

The Brexiteers can call it a sell-out, if they like. They can complain as much as they want. This is the only chance we will have to leave the EU. There won’t be another.