Brexiteers must now hold their nerve against Remain’s desperate last stand

In these final tense weeks, the Independent Group’s attempt to turn back the clock has to be resisted

The Independent Group (Tig) in Parliament came into being this week, chiefly to stop Brexit. If the Conservatives hold their nerve, this reason for the group’s existence will have passed in five weeks’ time: we shall have left the European Union.

That nerve – never strong at the best of times – is showing signs of fraying. In this long, exhausting story, fear has been the weapon used 99 per cent of the time by the Remain side. It did not work with the British electorate, but it does take its toll on some Tory MPS and so, as D-day approaches, it is being recycled – each time faster and more furious.

Since the three Tory “Tiggers” bounced out on Wednesday to join the more sorrowful and numerous Labour escapees, fear has been stoked once again. The Brexit Delivery Group of backbench Conservatives, seeking the sort of all-smiles divorce that will never be available so long as people like Jean-claude Juncker walk this earth, wrote to the Prime Minister.

Some of its members, it said, felt “deeply troubled” about the prospect of no deal. Unless that prospect were removed, they would be tempted to “get behind amendments that are planned in the name of Oliver Letwin” in the key parliamentary vote next week. At the same time, it was leaked that four Cabinet ministers had threatened Mrs May with resignation over the same point.

Sir Oliver’s plan is not yet tabled, but it will be a reworking of what recently failed to get through the Commons under the name of “Cooper-boles”. It would delay the date of Brexit in order to rule out no deal, its form exempting the legislation from normal parliamentary scrutiny. This exemption could lead, gradually, to an inability to govern at all. Donald Tusk famously wants a special circle of Hell for Brexiteers. Instead, Sir Oliver is offering this country Limbo – an unpleasant form of afterlife declared non-existent by the Pope in 2007, but still oddly attractive to MPS who hate having to make up their minds.

These scares have been erected on a rickety scaffold of moral equivalence by Anna Soubry and others, and broadcast unchallenged on the BBC. They claim that the country is threatened by extremists in both parties. Kenneth Clarke says that the Brexiteers’ European Research Group (ERG) is his party’s version of Jeremy Corbyn’s Momentum. Both are alleged to have infiltrated the grass roots of their parties, making MPS, as Ms Soubry put it, “more terrified of their constituency party than of the electorate”. Heidi Allen, another Tory Tigger (though one whom I have never heard make a Tory remark), said it was time “to bring the British public into the conversation”.

Actually, the British public have, thank goodness, been very much part of the conversation ever since the referendum was first called in 2016; 17.4 million of them made a decisive contribution to it on June 23 in that year. Ms Allen endorsed their decision when she sought their vote at the general election of 2017. Since then, however, she has not wanted to hear from them so much. Constituency associations are well within their rights to remind their MPS of the promises they made to voters.

“Erg=momentum” is a baffling equation. Who are these Right-wing extremists? Iain Duncan Smith, who put in a decade of work to make our welfare system more humane? Sir Bernard Jenkin, who supports every sort of LGBT modernisation? Does anyone seriously imagine that Jacob Rees-mogg’s fondness for the Latin Mass is on a par with Jeremy Corbyn’s backing for a grossly anti-semitic mural? Luciana Berger is leaving the Labour Party because it is now partly run by people who hate Jews. Ms Soubry is leaving the Conservative Party because a large minority of its MPS want to uphold Parliament’s pledge to implement properly the result of the EU referendum. I can’t see the symmetry.

Another attack by the fear campaign is to accuse the ERG of intransigence, of insisting on a crazy purity. In fact, the ERG has sacrificed a great deal that it holds dear to seek some consensus. Its members recently voted for the Brady amendment, which accepted Mrs May’s deal so long as she took the backstop out of it. It devised, with sensible Remainers like Nicky Morgan and Damian Green, something called the Malthouse compromise. It is, as its name suggests, a compromise.

In return, the ERG gets no thanks. Its concessions are pocketed, and then it is assailed once more. Within days of accepting Brady, Mrs May moved surreptitiously from promising to “replace” the backstop, to “changing” the backstop, to “making changes” in the backstop. Brexiteers are amused to hear Remainers complaining that she gives them an unfair slice of her attention. In reality, she makes herself inscrutable to both sides, but reserves her animosity for Leavers.

It is now much too late in the day to persuade many people to change their minds either way on the issue of Brexit itself. But it should at least be obvious that when anti-brexit MPS hum and haw about what they want and don’t want, they relieve Brussels of any need to make its own hard choices. You will have seen pictures this week of Mr Juncker with Mrs May. He was plastered (literally – wearing a bandage on his cheek where, he told her, he had cut himself shaving), and he looked happy. Well he might: all he needs to do is sit there, concede nothing and watch the House of Commons run away with Sir Oliver’s faultlessly loopy logic.

It cannot be said often enough that if MPS want a good deal for Britain they have to convince the EU that, if we don’t get one, we shall leave anyway. Mrs May, in her heart of hearts, cannot face this. Uncoincidentally, she has got a very bad deal so far.

In the course of protracted negotiations, it is quite common almost to forget why you are doing what you are doing. Negotiating processes are rightly shaped towards achieving a result, but this can lull people into thinking that agreement must be reached. Wrong: agreement must be sincerely sought, but cannot always be beneficially achieved. Most people who have ever negotiated to buy or sell a house understand that. If it is true, as the best experts point out, that Mrs May’s deal will tie Britain into the power of the EU rather than free us from it, how could anyone argue that it respects the referendum choice? The fear campaign panics some MPS into forgetting this, but it is simple and true.

Some people see the Independent Group’s emergence as the birth-pangs of a new political force. If it means that the Labour Party can be brought to its senses, everyone should welcome it. But so far, it looks more like the death-throes of the ancien regime. The most fanatical operators in Westminster politics at present are those who think of themselves as the most moderate. They will try almost any device to prevent what we voted for.

As she strode confidently down the street this week, Anna Soubry looked as if she saw herself as Liberty Leading the People (though more fully clothed than in Delacroix’s original). In truth, she is more like Marie-antoinette, prescribing cake for those who seek bread. As I write, there are only 35 days of this nonsense left. Let’s hold our nerve and stick it out.