Brexit vote defeat won’t just finish off the PM, it might spell the end for the Tory Party as Red Santa Corbyn rides in
CABINET ministers cling to their red boxes like drowning men as Theresa May drives her stricken government towards the rocks.
Ex-Brexit cheerleaders Liam Fox and Michael Gove can be seen firing distress flares to save May's Brexit bodge.
It is not a good look.
Mrs May’s defeat in next week’s crucial Withdrawal Bill vote will almost certainly mark the end of her premiership.
It might also mark the beginning of the end for the Conservative Party.
Nobody would cheer louder than Momentum’s Marxist Labour insurgents.
There is even wild talk of an emergency Christmas election and the advent of bearded Marxist Jeremy Corbyn as Red Santa.
Downing Street is fuelling the nightmare with a trash-and-burn campaign of terror among Tory waverers, rallying party supporters against their own MPs and leaving a legacy of distrust and disillusion.
A stream of wobbling Brexiteers has been deployed in pro-Brussels newspapers and the ever co-operative BBC.
Even “deep-thinking” cookery writer Delia Smith was hauled in for her two euros’ worth.
It was startling to watch my old colleague Michael Gove brazenly sell his soul on the europhile Andrew Marr Show.
Mr Gove’s friends believe he has suffered a crisis of self-confidence since severing his friendship with David Cameron and knifing fellow Brexit architect Boris Johnson.
The Environment Secretary admits he “reflected long and hard” about quitting over Mrs May’s deeply unpopular deal.
He was more cautious, saying it was “less than perfect”.
He then insisted Britain was a great trading nation and would survive any short-term “turbulence” if we left the EU on March 29 without a deal.
He also repeated his attack on “blood-curdling and unjustified” Treasury and Bank of England warnings of economic Armageddon if we fail to sign up.
It sounded very much like the old Michael Gove — until he insisted that we must support Theresa’s dodgy deal, regardless.
This is astonishing, since he and fellow Cabinet Brexiteers such as Fox, Penny Mordaunt, Andrea Leadsom and Chris Grayling will have seen secret legal advice that the deal is an EU trap.
In a bombshell document, Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox warns the detested “backstop” dividing Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK “would endure indefinitely”.
Dancing forever to Europe’s “Ode To Joy” is apparently better than a brief period of turbulence by leaving of our own accord.
Mr Gove suggests the kindly burghers of Brussels would never humiliate Britain and have as much to lose from a backstop as we do.
They would set us free as soon as possible.
I have known Mr Gove for 25 years.
He is a profoundly decent and intelligent man.
But he must know from long and bitter experience that this is not how the EU works.
We have naughtily asked to leave.
If we do well, we would encourage others to follow suit. We must be duly punished.
EU leaders can see — apparently more clearly than our own abject leaders — just how well we might do and how much of a threat a prosperous, independent Britain would pose to their Grand Project.
Nobody can be certain what will happen after next Tuesday’s crunch vote.
A snap election or a second referendum are unthinkable but possible.
Returning to full EU membership is both unthinkable and impossible.
There are alternatives... the Norway Option, Canada Plus... but they are fraught with complications.
Yet there is a way we could avoid Mr Gove’s “turbulence” and leave in an orderly fashion without any deal at all.
We don’t have to “crash out” or drive off a cliff like Thelma and Louise.
Neither option would be good for Britain — or the EU.
MOST READ IN OPINION
It should be possible to negotiate a 12 to 18-month window to prepare a deal which suits both sides — and pay an appropriate sum to Brussels for the extra time.
First, of course, we need a new leader and a new Prime Minister.
That is almost as complicated as Brexit.
Kate Osamor finally leaves Labour Party
DISGRACED Labour MP Kate Osamor has finally quit Jeremy Corbyn’s team, but only after proof she lied about knowing her son Ishmael was a convicted drug handler.
Ms Osamor told a Times reporter who confronted her with the evidence: “I should have come down here with a bat and smashed your face in.”
“F*** off,” she added and chucked a bucket of water.
Two questions.
Is it any surprise Ishmael grew up with contempt for the law?
And what would have happened to a Tory MP who behaved like that to a Guardian hack?