Political column – November 15

There's been dancing in the streets. Wild celebrations in the corridors of power. Enthusiastic waving of the Union Jack and the EU flag.

And that's just in Brussels where they're already making plans to spend their £40 billion bonus.

In the UK, the only person to be delighted by the greatest triumph of British diplomacy and negotiating nous since 1938 is one Theresa in London

For everybody else, there are two entrenched ideological positions which have dampened down any outbreak of enthusiasm.

The first is the Remain view that any new deal with the EU can't be as good as the deal we have currently got.

For Leave, it is that any deal that the EU is prepared to agree to can only be a bad deal for the UK.

Getting a deal past Michel "the UK must be taught a lesson" Barnier is a cinch compared to what is to come.

Now comes the business of selling the draft Brexit agreement to Cabinet, MPs, and the wider public.

Time, then, to kick the tyres and see which bits fall off.

In Government circles, there are incentives to support the agreement. The first incentive is that you won't have to resign. The second is that if you don't resign and others do, then you might be promoted.

And the third is that if the deal fails to gain Parliamentary approval the Government might fall and that could see bogeyman Jeremy Corbyn coming to power and Tories will do anything to prevent that.

For Mrs May, the signs are ominous. When an arch Brexiteer, Boris Johnson, and his brother, an arch Remainer, Jo Johnson, both are singing from the same "it's rubbish" songsheet and have both resigned over the course of the Brexit negotiations, how can anyone, anywhere, have confidence in what Theresa May has cobbled together with the EU?

Boris has openly called for the Cabinet to mutiny. Former Brexit secretary David Davis has accused the Government of having a defeatist approach and says Chequers is an "unsustainable zombie plan."

Labour meanwhile will run the agreement through its semi-legendary "six tests."

I predict the answers will be: nope, you've got to be joking, not on your nelly, get lost, no way, and we won't support this – let's have a general election instead.

The DUP, which is propping up the Government and is its only hope of getting anything through, is against too.

So now the scene is set for high Parliamentary drama.

In the next few weeks Mrs May, the greatest Prime Minister since David Cameron, will have to take the deal to the Commons (assuming it survives that far) for the much-vaunted "meaningful vote" which was promised.

When, as seems likely, it is voted down, we shall be in a situation where "all options are open," to crib from the highly flexible Labour Party "policy."

Vote of confidence? Nah, Tories would unite and Theresa May would win.

General election? Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 it would require two-thirds of MPs to vote for one and with Christmas coming Tory MPs are not going to want to be political turkeys.

New Prime Minister? Maybe, but what real difference would that make?

There is a way out. The whole thing could be put to the people again.

An electorate who were allegedly too thick to understand the full implications of an in-out referendum on the EU can instead be invited to express a view on a complex 500-page deal which no ordinary person will bother reading.

I predict the questions in the coming People's Vote will be multi-choice.

Here goes:

1. Do you want Theresa May's rubbish deal?

2. Do you want a disastrous No Deal?

3. Do you want to Remain in the EU?

If, however, there should somehow be a general election in which Labour wins, it will be an opportunity for the delivery of the modern version of democracy in the UK.

In this new model of democracy, Labour winning the general election does not mean the Tories leaving office.

Instead, the Conservatives stay put and argue that there were no terms and conditions on the ballot paper explaining to voters what a Labour Government would really mean.

After two years of explaining that a Labour Government would be a Really Bad Thing the general election is held again to give a more enlightened electorate a chance to get it right second time round.