MPs must put a stake through the heart of the Robbins Treaty

There is a remarkable consensus as to what MPs must do tomorrow evening. The weekend’s final spasms of government frenzy in seeking to terrify Conservative MPs barely lasted past Sunday lunchtime – the story of the Chief Whip stumbling across a dastardly plot in the cloakroom, as Boris Johnson puts it in the Telegraph, “like Jim, the narrator of Treasure Island, who overhears the conspiracy of the pirates while hiding in an apple barrel”

The call now is not just for MPs to defeat the Robbins Treaty tomorrow, but to do so demonstrably, driving a stake through the heart of Martin Selmayr’s plot to split Northern Ireland from Britain.

After tomorrow? Who knows. Corbyn has declared he will call a vote of no confidence in the government. He is likely to lose it, but if by some chance he gains the needed two-thirds majority, it would mean a General Election on Thursday 21st February. Other desperate Conservative Remainers are doubtless plotting puerile public schoolboy tricks, with little notion of the fury they will unleash amongst the 17.4m, who have to date proven remarkably patient, well-behaved and responsible in the face of naked democratic sabotage.

No. I think Boris has the sense of it today;

If the PM is defeated on Tuesday, she should come to the House and announce:

(1) that the UK and EU will keep the sensible bits of the deal, notably on citizens;

(2) that the backstop is coming out;

(3) that we are going to use the implementation period to negotiate a Canada-style free-trade deal, and withhold half the £39 billion until we get it; and

(4) that we are going to intensify preparations for no deal – in the knowledge that it is by preparing for no deal that we are likely to get a very good deal.