Forget Brexit (I dare you!). The game now, in the Tory Party, is positioning for the looming leadership election. Because I can find no one in the Cabinet or on the backbenches who still believes Theresa May will be PM for longer than a few weeks, such is their fury and agony that we’re 18 days from Brexit and we still don’t know the how, the when, or even the whether we’ll leave (OK, so it was impossible to forget Brexit – sorry!).
Even those who think the petard that’s hoisting her was made in Brussels say she had a choice about attaching herself to it.
Here is the voice of a senior cabinet member who till now has never uttered a squeak of disloyalty (or at least not to me): ‘she’s got to go, and soon; the idea that, if we do manage to get out, she’ll be in charge of the 80 per cent of the negotiations left to do with the EU [on our future trade and security relationship] is utterly unthinkable.’
Such is the despair about her in the Conservative Party that, as I mentioned on my show three weeks ago, all the talk on the Tory backbenches – and now in the Cabinet – is whether her only effective Brexit Plan B is to pledge that another Tory PM will lead the years of talks on the UK’s long-term commercial, information-sharing, policing and defence relationship with the EU.
Which would mean she would have to pledge to quit by the end of June, probably.
Will she make that ultimate sacrifice, for the good of party and country (as her colleagues would see it)?
‘We all think she should’ said a minister, who might be exaggerating, but possibly not much. ‘But it’s just not her style. She will always find a reason why the time is not now.’
But a third minister said it was ‘bonkers’ the PM still talks about working through her agenda for the nation, as she did on her recent official trip to the EU summit in Egypt because ‘in December [the anniversary of the last confidence vote in her] the party will simply throw her out.’
The minister asked ‘why on earth does she want to hang around for that humiliation?’
The true measure of the collapse in the Cabinet’s confidence in her is the prism through which they see the expected vote on Wednesday, on whether to take a no-deal Brexit off the table. More than half the cabinet are terrified at the idea that the PM will buckle under pressure from Gauke, Rudd and Clark and make it a free vote: although they agree with the Gaukward Squad that no deal would be an economic catastrophe, they also know that Tory members – who are largely Brexiters – would never forgive them if they were to vote against no deal.
‘It is much easier for me if there is a three line whip against no deal’ said a minister, with conspicuous leadership ambitions. He fears those ambitions would be blown up if he walks through the lobbies with Remainy ministers and backbenchers, who are seen by much of the Tory congregation as betraying the true Brexit way.
The point, of course, is that the cabinet revolt against the PM lags behind the almost wholesale insurrection on the backbenches. Here are the words of an influential Brexiter backbencher: ‘We couldn’t have her in charge of the future-relationship talks, because they will be as difficult and will probably be more important than the abortive ones we’ve had on the divorce.’
So in the expected event that the PM cannot secure agreement from the EU to modify the Northern Ireland backstop to mollify Tory Brexiter and Northern Ireland DUP MPs, would a pledge from the PM to go and go soon win over any of those rebel MPs?
‘Some of my colleagues would vote for the deal if she promised to stand down’ said the grandee.
Enough, to win the day for her deal?
‘I don’t know’ he said. ‘But what other card does she have to play?’
UPDATE:
Even if the PM were to offer to quit tomorrow, she would not not win her vote.
Because for the True Brexit believers of the European Research Group, the backstop is more important than who occupies Number 10.
They have been sounded out by ministers about whether they would back the PM’s reworked Brexit deal, if Theresa May were to offer herself up in ritual sacrifice.
They have rejected her martyrdom. Partly because they are sure it will happen come what may.
But more importantly because they fear that even if one if their own – a Raab, Johnson or Davis – succeeded May, it would be impossible to cancel the backstop.
And annulling the backstop is more important – for them – than determining who occupies Number 10.
One of their number told me that even if a ‘proper’ Brexiter became PM in short order – and they are by no means confident of that – they simply don’t see how they would ever get out of the backstop, short of reneging on the Withdrawal Agreement AFTER it has been ratified.
‘We are not in the business of ripping up international treaties’ he said. ‘We’ve thought about it but it is not a good look for this country.’
So burying the backstop is all that matters to them.
And what that motivates the ERG to do is to ensure both that the PM loses the meaningful vote tomorrow – which ministers expect her to do by a margin of well over 100 votes – and then that parliament does not eliminate the option of a no-deal Brexit in any binding and permanent way.
I will elaborate on this soon, but my own central projection has not changed – that even if MPs seize some control of the Brexit agenda, as per the manoeuvring by the three-headed backbench beast known as LetwinCooperBoles, we are heading for a no-deal Brexit, though more likely at the end of June than the end of March.
And for what it’s worth, when I put this to members of the cabinet, no one seriously demurs – though few actively want that outcome.
Arguably we are witnessing the greatest diplomatic humiliation for a British government in more than half a century, and our political system seems powerless to prevent it.
Robert Peston is ITV’s Political Editor. This article originally appeared on his Facebook page.
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