A GIFT AT THE BEST POSSIBLE MOMENT Jack Doyle

THERE was no wrapping paper or card and certainly no tinsel, but yesterday Boris Johnson was handed what looks very much like an early Christmas present.

For weeks the Prime Minister has been asking for a General Election to break the Brexit deadlock, and now there’s every chance his dearest Christmas wish could come true.

Until now, he’s run into two obstacles – Jeremy Corbyn and the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act.

Mr Corbyn has twice refused to vote for an early election and, without his support, the Prime Minister has little hope of clearing the twothirds majority the Act requires and getting an election on December 12.

Tomorrow Mr Johnson will have another go, but Labour MPs have seen the polls – including one yesterday putting the Tories 16 points ahead – and are reluctant, as veteran Frank Field put it yesterday, to be the turkeys voting for Christmas.

Unless Mr Corbyn has a dramatic change of heart, he’ll resist and stick to his risible line that he won’t allow an election until No Deal is off the table.

Which brings us to the gift handed to the Prime Minister by the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Nationalists in the form of an election Bill, which would amend the Act and set the date for the next election on December 9.

Crucially, it would require only a simple majority of MPs to pass. Add together the 288 Tory MPs, 35 Nationalists and 19 Lib Dems, and you’ve got 342 – a comfortable win.

The Lib Dems also have nearly 100 votes in the House of Lords, which could prove useful if peers decide they want to stand in the way of an election.

In making their offer, the two minor parties are not trying to help Mr Johnson, but are acting out of cynical self-interest.

The SNP are ahead in the polls and keen to secure an election before the trial of their former leader Alex Salmond on charges of sexual assault – which he denies – goes ahead next year.

Meanwhile Jo Swinson, who has been assiduously positioning the Lib Dems as the anti-Brexit party, will hope to appeal to Remain voters unconvinced by Mr Corbyn.

If they vote for the Bill and refuse to back ‘killer’ amendments such as one extending the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds, then we could be heading for a December election for the first time since 1923.

For Mr Johnson, this could hardly have come at a better moment. In the next 48 hours, EU leaders will decide how long Brexit will be delayed beyond Thursday night.

At that point, Leave voters will see that Mr Johnson has failed to fulfil his ‘come what may, do or die’ pledge of getting us out on October 31. But instead of blaming him, No 10 strategists hope they will blame this obstructive, Remain-dominated Parliament, and look to take their frustrations out at the ballot box.