Janet Daley:

The Prime Minister can now look Merkel in the eye and say that he needs a deal to sell to his party, or Britain will vote to leave

The new received wisdom is that Labour and the Conservatives are now in precisely equivalent internal crises. The leaderships of both parties, it is said, are in remarkably similar bloodcurdling conflict with elements in their own ranks. Jeremy Corbyn may be plunged into a risible farrago of mortifying coup and counter-coup on his front bench, but David Cameron’s problem with dissidents in his Cabinet is equally catastrophic. Mr Cameron, facing the latest incarnation of that great killer of Tory electoral prospects, Eurosceptic Rebellion, has had to give in to his insurgents, just as Mr Corbyn had to back away from sacking his star opponent Hilary Benn.

Thus, much to the BBC’s relief, do we have a perfectly balanced tale of two leaders in exactly the same amount of trouble, both of them being forced into ignominious retreat by mutinous colleagues. The very neatness of this story should give grounds for suspicion. It is, of course, a complete fiction.

True, Mr Cameron has decided to allow his Eurosceptic Cabinet members to campaign openly in the referendum for a vote to leave the EU –

if they choose to do so when the time comes – without having to resign from the Government. By doing this (and perhaps, as we report today, monitoring the pronouncements of ministers whose fidelity is dubious), he has succeeded at a stroke in avoiding months of threats, rumours and acrimony as well as the break-up of his remarkably successful front-bench team. So both immediate confrontation and endless back-bench recrimination is avoided. But more importantly, Mr Cameron now has an ace to play in his “renegotiation” discussions with other EU leaders who are, as we know, desperate to avoid Brexit. He can go along to the splendid dinners and the late-night talkfests and say: “This is serious. The ‘leave’ camp is so strong in Britain that I’ve had to allow my own Cabinet the freedom to campaign against staying in the EU. If you don’t give me a deal that I can sell to my party – really meaningful concessions that the anti-EU camp can’t pick apart – then I’m going to lose this thing.”

Who knows what wonders this warning may achieve – indeed, may already have achieved – in the quarters where these matters are decided? Victor Orban may be offended by the suggestion that his fellow Hungarians are travelling to the UK to take advantage of this country’s unconditional in-work benefits but he isn’t so outraged that he will put the UK’s membership of the EU at risk – which would mean an end to his people’s right to settle here at all.

Mrs Merkel may have principled objections to anything that counts as “discrimination” against citizens of another member state but she is in deep trouble at home over her opendoor policy on migration, particularly after the horrific incidents in Cologne which are a gift to the far Right. She must know that the British advocacy of national border controls – and of mitigating “pull” factors – has considerable support among her own population and is beginning to look like an argument whose time has come in even the most liberal EU states like Sweden and Denmark.

So maybe – just possibly – Mr Cameron has played a blinder here. His warnings of doom for the “remain” side in the referendum look all the more plausible precisely because he has had to “give in” to his own Cabinet sceptics, and his chances of getting a plausible deal are therefore enhanced.

It is beginning to look, as I mooted on these pages last week, as if a formula will be found that involves subjecting British workers (or at least some categories of them) to the same time delay on in-work benefits that are being proposed for EU incomers – hence removing the “discrimination” problem. Wait and see. And – wow, imagine this – if he does get what can be made to sound like convincing concessions then the would-havebeen “leave” campaigners on the Tory front bench might permit themselves to be persuaded to give him their support. In which case, all his birthdays will have come at once. It will scarcely be necessary to conduct a vote: the “remain” side will win by acclamation.

Such a stupendous result would in no small degree be owed to the wise advice Mr Cameron has received from Lord (Nigel) Lawson and Mr Cameron’s early mentor, Michael Howard, who both urged him to offer this freedom to Cabinet members, thus averting a repeat of the horrific eyeballing contest that brought down John Major. And it will have been contrary to the Olympian guidance offered by Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine – those magnificent historic figures who loom out of the Jurassic mists whenever Britain’s role in the EU comes into question. I wonder what the BBC will do when these two great men shuffle off this mortal coil.

In the old Soviet Union, it was rumoured that deceased politburo figures were stuffed and propped up on the Kremlin balcony for the May Day parade. Presumably now it would be possible to produce digital replicas who could recite the familiar dire warnings to camera. Happily this is not yet necessary: Mr Clarke and Lord Heseltine are still available in the fullblooded flesh whenever the BBC calls.

Tactically this was a no-brainer for the Conservative leadership as would have been evident from any dispassionate historical study. When a leader encounters a critical challenge to his authority, he has a choice. He must either become repressive (or even more repressive, in the case of a dictator) or allow some scope for principled dissidence and hope to win the argument to the public’s satisfaction. In a democracy, the latter is clearly more defensible, and certainly more attractive. So Mr Cameron wins on that score too.

Mr Corbyn, on the other hand, went for the Ceauşescu option, in the course of which he discovered the terrible fate that meets the unsuccessful bully: the kid you are threatening in the playground can suddenly turn around and say, “Oh yeah. You and whose army?” Unless you really do have a well-drilled army behind you, you will, at that point, collapse in whimpering surrender. Which is what happened, I am absolutely sure, when Hilary met Jeremy for that famously long talk.

So Mr Cameron has reinforced his hold on the leadership for the moment, whatever you think of the real merits of the case for staying in the EU.

But will there be an ignominious end – with a metaphorical assassination – to the Corbynite dispensation any time soon? I still believe that there will be, in spite of the rather bizarre insistence by many commentators that he is “here to stay” and that somehow the latest reshuffle chaos has actually strengthened his position.

What looks to me like a Brownite lynch mob is forming in plain sight. Tom Watson, one of Mr Brown’s more, um, formidable henchmen openly, if rather cautiously, criticised the reshuffle only to be followed by a full throttle blast from the Brown chief hitman (sorry, former press spokesman) Damian McBride, who let rip without any reservations.

When you think of it, it should have been obvious. The Blairites would never have had a chance in a contest with Marxist true believers who saw them as the very incarnation of evil. But the Brown people – well, that’s a very different matter. The unions may have hated Blair but they retained a deep respect for Brown, which is why they put his acolyte Ed Miliband into the leadership with such disastrous consequences. It will be up to the union bosses now to decide that the game is up – that the socialist revival led by Jeremy is really nothing more than a north London party game. And if they do, then it is the Brownites – who are at least competent bullies – to whom they will turn.