Allister Heath

Leavers could decide their best hope is now to force the PM out and use the delay to elect a new leader

Could this finally be the end of the line for the Prime Minister? She is begging the EU to delay Brexit until June 30, but is hinting that she will resign if the date slips further. As ever with Theresa May, nobody, perhaps not even herself, knows whether she actually means it, or if it is just more verbiage designed to facilitate another round of can-kicking.

If she is serious, this might prove to be the first piece of good news in a long time for beleaguered Brexiteer MPS. Even if she is not, it might jolt them into devising a proper post-may strategy, rather than simply whining and complaining while the forces of Remain slowly crush them.

Mrs May is now the Remainers’ greatest asset: she has gone along with all of their destructive plans, at least since losing her majority in the 2017 election. She has refused to sell Brexit to the people, presenting it entirely as a problem to be solved, poisoning the public debate and preventing us from uniting behind a positive vision.

She has worked for the civil service establishment, rather than the other way around. She signed up to the warped trap that is the backstop, setting in motion a course of events which now looks like delivering a choice between her awful deal and an even softer non-brexit. She has no authority and has allowed Philip Hammond, her Chancellor, and his allies to seize control.

A Tory leadership challenge is therefore the last thing the Remainers now want. They could end up with a Brexiteer who blows up their apple cart, and a general election that loosens their grip on Parliament. John Bercow, all or most of the TIGS and all those who resign the Tory whip in protest would lose their seats. It’s what passes for a nightmare in 11 Downing Street.

The Tory Remainer plan has long been either to pass her dreadful deal, and then seek to keep us in the backstop, the customs union and the rest, while negotiating an extremely integrated long-term relationship with the EU, or to engineer a Parliamentary coup that leads more quickly to a super-soft Brexit.

Her deal remains unlikely to pass, even with Donald Tusk’s threat yesterday: some Brexiteers will support it, out of terror of the alternatives, but why would the DUP back it without the Stormont lock or any proper concessions? The numbers still look too tight.

As a result, the primary Remain strategy is now for Parliament to seize power from the executive and form some sort of incoherent, temporary and entirely unsustainable alternative government, aided and abetted by Bercow’s extraordinary disregard of the constitution.

In an ideal Remainer universe, Mrs May would remain as PM in name only, a powerless, angry figurehead forced to do MPS’ bidding, clinging to her office in the vain hope that buying time will somehow pay off for her. She would be forced to negotiate a permanent customs union, single market membership and buy into most other aspects of the EU. This would take longer than June 30 to pin down, so the UK would need a lengthier extension.

Such a pathetic set-up would be a perfect case of Remainer cake-ism: Tories, Labour, SNP, Lib Dem and TIGS forming a coalition in all but name without having the courage to overthrow the existing TORY-DUP Government. The Cabinet would keep their salaries, perks and cars but with the exception of Philip Hammond and the Remainers, would be robbed of any meaningful power. The constitution would be wrecked, the country ungovernable, but the Remainers wouldn’t care: they want to thwart Brexit regardless of the consequences.

At some point, of course, this sorry arrangement would implode, especially given that the negotiations would take ages: Parliament would prove itself incapable of governing without civil servants and the kind of support that the executive branch requires. But it would be too late for the Brexiteers: the final step would simply be a cancellation of Article 50, and the end of Brexit, for now at least.

None of these clever schemes work if Mrs May resigns. The Remainers don’t want a new Prime Minister and a leadership challenge: they know that it will prove impossible to prevent at least one real Brexiteer from making it to the final two MPS, and thus being selected by members. A new, dynamic and charismatic pro-leave PM who could actually win an election and prevent a Corbyn calamity, if such a person exists, would transform the political scene and rescue Brexit from

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the dead. That is why the Remainers backed Mrs May in December, and that is why they aren’t ready to precipitate her downfall now.

All of which means that the Brexiteers face a dilemma. Should they simply vote her deal down and dig in, hoping that we get to June 30 and she simply resigns? What if she is not telling the truth? She has U-turned on everything else. What if her real Plan B is to agree to an even softer Brexit before June 30 in a bid to cling to power? What if she cancels Article 50 as her last act to avoid no deal? Such scenarios are all eerily plausible.

Tory Brexiteers may therefore decide that their only hope is to force Mrs May out before June 30, and use the extension period to elect a new leader – hopefully, one committed to Brexit and with enough charisma to reboot a broken party. They cannot do so using the normal Tory leadership rules: these prevent another contest until December. There are other routes, however.

All the non-remainers in the Cabinet could tell her to go; a large enough delegation of MPS might have the same effect; the rules of the 1922 committee could be changed; or MPS might even table a motion to halve her salary, a traditional signal of noconfidence, as Paul Goodman of Conservativehome reminds us. Assuming the DUP doesn’t withdraw its support for Mrs May, in extremis, a small group of Brexiteers may decide to vote with Labour in a motion of no confidence in the Government, even at the cost of losing the whip.

None of us know what Mrs May is really thinking. But by threatening to resign, she has given the Brexiteers a tantalising glimpse of what life could be like under a new Prime Minister. How will they respond?

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