Hard Remainers should be careful what they wish for

Those pushing for a second referendum risk delivering the chaotic no-deal Brexit they so fear

Well, that’s that. The Brexiteers’ best route to victory was closed off this week after months of dithering ended up handing the Prime Minister another year in office. She duly went straight off to Brussels for a vintage EU slap-down. Now, though, whatever humiliation is dished out to our hapless leader, the Brexit faction is firmly out of the driving seat for the coming crucial months. They waited too long and strategised too little.

There’s always the chance they make some last, madcap gamble: collapse the Government in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence and then try to install a new leader and get a majority within the deadline of two weeks. But such a desperate bet would be highly likely to end up with a general election in which a hopelessly divided Tory party, still led by Mrs May, hands power to Jeremy Corbyn.

Excluding this possibility, there are two paths forward, both fraught with risk. The first involves a cross-party compromise, the second sees Parliament fracture further, this time driven not by the most hardline Brexiteers, but by their nemeses, the extreme Remainers.

The first path is that Parliament climbs down and passes the PM’S deal. In spite of Mrs May’s increasingly visible incompetence, in spite of the deal’s risks and flaws, there are strong reasons to think that both moderate Brexiteers and Remainers could and should support it.

Among the Brexiteers, many will now recognise that they need to start engaging in damage limitation: avoid further softening or losing Brexit altogether. There is already a substantial faction in Parliament focused on this. There are 176 probrexit Tory MPS. If we assume that all 117 Tories who voted against Mrs May this week are hardliners who would embrace a no-deal if necessary, that still leaves 59 others. They are MPS like James Cleverly and Neil O’brien, who campaigned and voted for leaving the EU but believe the only pragmatic way to do it is through Parliament, with a deal, rather than losing a battle for a pure Brexit. They argue that if Brexiteers don’t take Mrs May’s deal, they risk being sidelined while Parliament adopts a softer version.

This pragmatic Brexit faction is more widespread than realised, because they aren’t loudmouths. I’ve met Brexiteers even among older, prominent Thatcherites who calculate that it is better to do the deal now, and then lever our way further out as the geopolitical landscape shifts, than to lose Brexit altogether or let in a Corbyn government. They won’t persuade their most diehard colleagues or those whose leadership ambitions rely on defiance, but they might lead the way for a broader shift among Brexiteer MPS, who know they are running out of options.

So what about the Remainers? The general belief is that they will demand one of two things in return for supporting Mrs May’s deal: either an ultra-soft Brexit or a second referendum. The soft-brexit lot are potentially open to compromise because their objections to the deal are already pretty spurious. They are led by prominent backbench Labour MPS, whose arguments against Mrs May’s deal sound increasingly absurd on their own terms. MPS like Hilary Benn complain in one breath that they don’t like it because the backstop is indefinite and we can’t leave, then in the next that it’s all unacceptable because it doesn’t tie us into the EU’S regulations and customs union permanently. Yvette Cooper says she doesn’t like the deal because it doesn’t guarantee access to EU security databases, then mockingly declares that Number 10 has been trying to secure the very access she wants, but had its overtures rejected by Brussels. This is cake-and-eat-it obstructionism.

These MPS are holding out, obviously, for concessions. There is a cross-party coalition pushing for a Norway Plus or a Norway Minus or a Norway-2000-father-christmas model. Fans of this Lapland Extraordinaire option claim that it can unite Parliament, achieve frictionless trade, protect our fish and be achieved with minimal negotiation. They are wrong on most counts. This ultra-soft Brexit also includes free movement, full regulatory control and big EU budget payments, unlike Mrs May’s deal. The prospect that it could be added to the list of Britain’s formal negotiating aims should concentrate minds among Brexiteers.

These Norway Remainers also have a reason to support Mrs May’s deal in the end, though. Given the time available, the deal on the table is the only practical way of progressing towards a Norway model and the only sure-fire way to avoid a no-deal Brexit. There isn’t time or political stability enough to start faffing about with a whole new, legally binding negotiation, especially given Mrs May’s objection to anything that allows continued free movement, as the Norway model requires.

Mrs May is striving to provide political cover for MPS to compromise by begging European governments for some legal crumbs of comfort. Her vague, unconvincing demands aren’t making it easy for them, but they have misjudged badly by refusing to play ball. They might conclude it is a lost cause, because if the deal passes, the DUP has vowed to abandon the Tories in a no-confidence vote, collapsing the Government. But the disintegration of her government is a risk Mrs May faces in all scenarios. Better for it to happen after the deal has been voted through and Brexit secured.

This leaves the last faction in Parliament: the diehard Remainers who will stop at nothing to reverse the referendum result. Their ranks are growing along with their confidence, but in their desperation to annul Brexit, they will overplay their hand. These MPS will hold out for nothing less than a restaging of the vote with a “remain” option on the ballot paper, for which the EU would likely agree to an Article 50 extension.

This could backfire spectacularly. Remainers are very likely to lose a second referendum. British voters will not like being asked the same question twice and the arrogance of the refusal to accept an authentic, democratic result will be deservedly punished.

But it’s also highly possible that we will discover there is no parliamentary majority even for a second referendum. By holding out for something that cannot get through the House, these extremist Remainers will play exactly the same losing game as the hard Brexiteers, running down the clock until, suddenly, they face exactly what they fear most: a disastrous, unplanned, no-deal Brexit. They are, in short, the hard Brexiteers’ new best friends.

Voters will not like being asked the same question twice. The refusal to accept a democratic result will be punished