Theresa May has completely lost touch with reality – her time is up

If, as the prime minister tells the public “I am on your side”, then there is a very good way for her to prove that debatable claim. She could put the Brexit deal she spent so much time, energy and political capital negotiating with the European Union to the people she so often invokes. It is the right thing to do, in any case, and she might finally confound her critics by actually winning a vote for a change. She could do worse.

Instead she has, bizarrely, declared war on the elected members of the House of Commons, including many Conservatives who won their seats in the snap election of 2017, despite her disastrous campaign. Now she is blackmailing her own country – not a winning pitch for any politician.

It’s odd that she has taken such a stand on a matter of detail – the length of the delay to Article 50. In sub-Churchillian tones she declares, “I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than 30 June.” And yet she has stated on 108 occasions (the Eurosceptics kept count) that the UK was leaving on 29 March. She hasn’t quit now that that line has been breached; so why hint at it for 30 June? Hardly a matter of high principle.

Ratcheting up the tension once again was not only dangerous, adding to an already febrile atmosphere, but counter-productive. If she wants a scrap with her own MPs, then many of them on all sides of the debate are more than happy to join in. She has lost support, at a point when she most needs it.

This is a prime minister who has long since lost her authority and her reputation for competence. She simply cannot “do politics”. She was an accidental PM. Elected unopposed as Conservative leader and prime minister simply because her rivals self-destructed. She lost the general election she called when she was 20 points ahead in the polls. She has lost every meaningful vote on her Brexit deal she has put to the Commons. She has failed to secure a complete deal with the European Union that will safeguard British interests in trade and security. She has forfeited the confidence of her cabinet, who openly defy her. She is no match for the steely nerves of her “allies” in the Democratic Unionist Party. Her only reliable ally is the passage of time, and her only technique is to “bounce” people into siding with her at the last minute. She behaves as if she has a majority of 149 behind her Brexit deal, rather than a majority of 149 against it. Like many a leader before her, stuck in a bunker mentality, she has lost touch with reality.

It hasn’t worked. The whiff of decay is unmistakeable. Britain probably will still be in the EU in 10 days’ time; but Theresa May might no longer be prime minister.

Next week, she will have yet another go. She seems destined to lose once again, and to dump the country into yet another constitutional crisis.

Where will Britain be shortly after 11pm on 29 March? That no one can answer that question is the deepest indictment of the government’s failure, and the utter weakness of the prime minister herself. The one thing that we should by now be clear on is that there won’t be a no-deal hard Brexit. This is the so-called crash-out option of trading on World Trade Organisation terms, with tariffs applied to imports, chaos at the ports and the Irish border the only one in the world that everyone agrees isn’t one – Schrodinger’s border. Virtually every day since Article 50 was triggered, the reputation of Britain in the world has suffered, and we seem not yet to have reached rock bottom.

Even so, there is a majority in the cabinet, and one of around 400 to 500 in the House of Commons against a hard Brexit. The country is, on balance, against it. The Commons has already voted twice to reject the option in any circumstances. Yet the prime minister, foolishly obstinate, remains set on trying to pretend that never happened, and refuses to amend the legislation accordingly. This could be achieved quite simply by removing the date from the law. And yet she will not take that simple step, something that could be passed through both houses of parliament and gain royal asset in a day or two. It is an act of abnegation with no recent parallel, a prime minister acting in defiance of the wishes of parliament to inflict vast damage on the country she purports to serve. Either she budges on this or her cabinet, her own MPs or the Commons should ditch her. If she wants an alibi for her latest U-turn, she could use the change in the law to create the substantial change speaker John Bercow requires her to make before she has her tilt at another meaningful vote on her deal. Otherwise, he should stand his ground and refuse her the opportunity to put it to the house for a third time. He has made his reasoned judgement, and should stick to it.

Even if the country was in a state of Zen-like calm, with goodwill breaking out on all sides of the Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Anna Soubry, Nigel Dodds and Jeremy Corbyn all singing from the same hymn sheet, there would still be a democratic imperative for the people to be given their right to approve of what is to be done in their name.

Of course, such a state of grace does not exist. The Commons is paralysed, and the prime minister is attempting, clumsily, to set people against parliament, in a sort of Poundland version of the struggles between crown and parliament in the seventeenth century. As it stands, we already have the Commons asserting its rights against the executive, and, indeed, the cabinet increasingly pushing its authority against the prime minister. From such a clutch of constitutional crises there is one simple answer. It is the one that Ms May has rejected but, paradoxically raised again in her own words – find out which side of the argument the voters really are on – now. Put her deal to the people.