Charles Moore:

The PM’S deal is terrifying: it achieves the exact opposite of what the Leave result was meant to deliver

Conscientious readers may be wondering whether they ought to ruin their weekend by reading the draft Political Declaration which goes with the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. Having done so, I can confidently assure them that they need not bother.

This is for two reasons. The first is that the Political Declaration, which sketches out the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the EU, has no legal force. It is merely an almost unedited, slogan-filled amalgamation of each side’s dreams, using vagueness to pretend they are reconcilable. The key document is the Withdrawal Agreement, supposed to be signed tomorrow. It will, if Parliament accepts it, have legal force. From the British point of view, it is disastrous. Despite its name, it is not just about withdrawing. It dictates what happens next; even what happens in perpetuity.

The Withdrawal Agreement takes our money unconditionally, keeps us in the customs union for the time being, and – through the Northern Irish backstop – holds us in it for ever unless we accept whatever terms for departure the EU may dictate. Not only does the Withdrawal Agreement give us no Get Out of Jail Free card: it withdraws our right to get out of jail at all.

The second reason why you need not read the Political Declaration is that spookily little has changed despite all Theresa May’s recent negotiating efforts. Almost exactly a year ago, she made her fatal mistakes. Desperate to be marked by headmaster Barnier as having made “sufficient progress” for the next stage of talks, she conceded the £39billion and the indivisibility of Northern Ireland from the customs union and the EU single market. Instead of looking for a plain free trade deal, she sought a “deep and special partnership” with the EU.

Thus Mrs May let Britain be deeply and specially trapped. Northern Ireland was the hostage seized to prevent us leaving the customs union. Staying in the customs union keeps us under the rules of the EU, while losing our say in making those rules. If we accept Mrs May’s agreement, we cannot make our own way in the world. We shall not be taking back control.

All that has happened in the past 12 months is that the EU has given form to Mrs May’s earlier defeats. To take a 1918 centenary analogy, she accepted an armistice as the defeated party. The consequent Withdrawal Agreement will be signed in Brussels, but it is her Versailles.

So Brexiteers in the House of Commons want to stop Mrs May’s deal. They have the numbers to do so. They do not necessarily, however, have the numbers to get what they want instead. Even at this late stage and after so many disasters, this is what Mrs May is still banking on. The establishment view – which I described in this column last week – is that Tory MPS will get frightened that the ultimate result of rejecting Mrs May’s deal might not be no deal (because Remainers will prevent that), but either a second referendum or a general election, and so they will capitulate. Right now, that looks unlikely, but history shows that most parliamentary rebellions melt away in the end.

A fierce psychological war is therefore raging. Mrs May’s supporters – more numerous than parliamentary debates suggest – make much of her quiet courage against male bluster and bullying. Her answers to questions on a radio phone-in yesterday, however, sounded more like quiet desperation.

After the formalities are concluded this weekend, expect a blitz on MPS, opinion formers and the public, in which the Government focuses on immigration above all else.

As the long-foreseen but longpostponed crunch finally approaches, everything possible will be done to distract attention from the core problem of the deal. So it is important to define exactly why it won’t do. It is not the money, though the severance pay is far too high and the ongoing contributions will still be large. It is not the transition, though that is too prolonged and stops us starting our new, post-divorce life. It is not even the temporary customs union, although the “deep and special partnership” is designed to elongate the temporary into never-never land.

No, the only bit that cannot be borne is the backstop. This is partly because it is a betrayal of Northern Ireland’s right (protected, by the way, in the Good Friday Agreement, which the backstop pretends to defend) to no change in its status without the consent of its citizens. Even more, it is because it is simply wrong to make a treaty about the future of our entire nation which forbids us to leave without the permission of the other party. The European Court of Justice will be the ultimate arbiter of our fate, which is exactly what Brexit is meant to avoid. Mrs May is proposing to put us more absolutely under a foreign power than we have been as EU members. This suggests not courage, but blindness.

The much-used phrase “vassal state” is exact. The great Dr Johnson’s dictionary defines a vassal as “One who holds by the will of a superior lord”; “a subject; a dependant”; “a servant; one who acts by the will of another”; “a slave; a low wretch”. All of the above apply, Brussels being our oh-so superior lord. Many other bits of the agreement are mistakes, often bad ones; but only the backstop is a betrayal – of the referendum result and of our independence itself.

When the Withdrawal Agreement comes back to Parliament, it is on this alone that its opponents should be unbudgeable. This is the one change on which they must insist: Mrs May must either return to Brussels to explain that Parliament will not accept the backstop, or lose office.

Obviously, a vote to reject Mrs May’s deal will start a battle which, though final, could be long. As they get into training for it, some Brexiteers are saying, “This is even worse than staying in the EU”. Dominic Raab said so yesterday. They need to test the truth of that assertion among themselves because, having rejected the deal on a first vote, they may be forced to vote on it a second time in the Commons.

When that time comes, they will be subjected to every sort of torment by the whips. Do they want “the ultimate catastrophe” of a Corbyn government, they will be asked by those working for the woman whose mishandling of the 2017 general election almost brought that catastrophe about. Do they want a second referendum (or some eleventhhour device) to keep us in the EU or haul us back into it? Do they want to incite a pro-remain Parliament to do its worst?

It is still too early, perhaps, for the Brexiteers to answer these questions definitively and in public. One step at a time. But what is already clear is that Mrs May is banking on Project Fear to get through a deal which is itself truly terrifying. Project Fear states that the no deal option is unimaginable (though Mrs May spent two years claiming to imagine it) and all the other options are worse than Mrs May’s.

Yet the no-deal option will happen if nothing else gets through. All responsible countries can and should make ad hoc arrangements for it. Its chief problems are short-term and therefore much better than those of her deal, which could be eternal. What Brexiteers must stick to is that there is no point in her leading our country out of the frying pan and into the fire.

READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion