Evening Standard comment: It’s groundhog week – just listen to the Brexiteers

It's groundhog week. For the third Monday since the new year the political world wakes up to an unchanging fact: Theresa May doesn’t have the votes to pass her Brexit deal.

The cycle is always the same.

One or two rebels break ranks. Cabinet ministers say they’re optimistic. The DUP turns up for talks. The Brexiteer media tell us it’s “on a knife edge”. And then?

Crushing defeat looms for the Prime Minister.

As the Evening Standard has consistently predicted, “the parliamentary numbers simply aren’t there — and never have been since she lost the Conservative Party its majority”.

This morning it was Boris Johnson who again delivered the coup de grace. He asked himself the loaded question: should he “stick to his guns” or “fold”.

His conclusion? He’ll keep firing.

Instead of second-guessing the Brexiteers’ motives, just listen to what they say — an underrated tactic in politics.

First, the Brexiteers say that Mrs May’s deal is “substantially worse” (in Mr Johnson’s words) than staying in the EU. The Irish backstop has been the focus of attention, but it’s also a distraction. It’s just the part of the deal that looked easiest to modify, and the most likely to swing the DUP.

The Brexiteer critique of the deal goes wider than the Irish backstop. They believe it would turn Britain, in Jacob Rees-Mogg’s view, into a “vassal state” of the EU.

Mr Johnson rehearsed the arguments today: “we will be legally and politically at the mercy of Brussels”. We do not “properly” leave the EU, in his view. Instead we become “non-voting members”.

Mr Johnson’s analysis is right — even if we come to different conclusions about what to do about it

For what Mrs May’s Brexit deal involves is trading a smooth exit in return for signing up to all the laws of the EU, handing over the cash, while leaving the room where decisions on those laws and money are made. We can all agree that that’s worse than staying in the EU.

Fantasy

Second, the Brexiteer rebels say that “no deal is better than a bad deal”.

We are only 11 days away from leaving the EU without a deal — the fantastical “clean break” that the anti-Europeans have always dreamed of. That is the legal default, unless someone can assemble a majority for something else.

No wonder Mr Johnson and others want to hold their nerve.

Their familiar cry again today that Mrs May should go back to Brussels to secure fundamental legal changes is not uttered with any expectation she will succeed — they have, after all, told us that this negotiating team have “so obviously failed this country at every level”.

It is a delaying tactic. To push off the meaningful vote until after the next EU council, eat up more of the 11 remaining days, and count down the clock. It will probably succeed.

And even if Brexit is delayed for two months, or even for two years, that keeps the prospect of a clean break in play — we’d just have more time and a better team to prepare for it, say the Brexiteers.

Downing Street shouldn’t be shocked. It was the Prime Minister who created the mythology that no-deal was an option and started counting down the clock.

Now her own plan is being deployed against her.

We report today that Mrs May could be about to offer up the head of Olly Robbins to the baying mob. If she does sacrifice her chief negotiator and the loyal civil servant who has done her bidding, we will know that these are indeed the last days in the bunker.

For, finally, we should listen to the hard Brexiteers when they say this: we have no confidence in this Prime Minister. They tried to eject her last December. They know that if the deal is passed that will be a humiliation for them, and a big Houdini-style victory for her.

Why would they hand her the keys to escape?

Mr Johnson asked for a show of hands from his local party on Friday and got “near unanimity” of support. He knows he would get the same from many local parties across the country right now.

His own personal dream is closer to realisation because he is the biggest thing that stands between the Tory Party and the truth of the disastrous Brexit choice they have made.

Who wants to face up to reality when you can keep the fantasy alive?