Theresa may’s attempt to resuscitate her deal has failed. The stage is set for a fight to the death | thearticle

“When I am dead and opened, you shall find ‘Calais’ lying in my heart.” Theresa May could well echo Queen Mary’s lament for the lost port, only her heart would be engraved with the more

prosaic words: “Withdrawal Agreement”. Two days before a crucial election must have seemed the most auspicious moment for the Prime Minister to announce her final offer. It has turned out

badly: not so much “dead on arrival”, as stifled at birth. MPs from every party, fearful of betraying their core supporters, queued up to denounce her ten-point plan. Concessions that would

once have tempted at least some of them were now dismissed as mere bagatelles. At a social event in the Palace of Westminster last night, the prominent Conservative backbencher Nigel Evans

gave a speech that was so dismissive, not only of the Withdrawal Agreement, but of its author — the woman who is still nominally the leader of his party — that the audience audibly gasped.

Such a public display of disloyalty would have been unthinkable under any previous Prime Minister. For many, perhaps most, Tory MPs, a Rubicon has evidently been crossed. It is this act of

matricide, rather than the proposed Bill itself, that will leave a lasting mark on British politics. On both sides of the House, and among Remainers as much as Leavers, the cracks over

Brexit have widened to a chasm. No compromise is now even conceivable. Both factions are hell-bent on victory at all costs. One or the other is bound to lose — and the bitterness of the

losers that must inevitably follow will resemble that of the Jacobites after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Their resistance to the Whig Ascendency and the House of Hanover, whom they saw

as German usurpers, lasted more than half a century and only ended with the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745. As if to evoke that era, the most prominent Brexiteer MEP, Daniel Hannan,

describes himself on Twitter not as a Tory, but as an “Old Whig”. Perhaps the most astonishing gesture of disloyalty has come from Lord Heseltine — an elder statesman as accustomed as any

to gesture politics, from waving the Mace to wielding the dagger. Having announced that he will vote Liberal Democrat tomorrow, the former deputy Prime Minister has lost the Tory whip in the

Lords. Sir John Major, a former Prime Minister, has denounced that decision in a letter to the_ Times_, but Lord Heseltine really left the Prime Minister no choice. The party rules apply no

less to grandees than they do to ordinary members. Even so, it is hard to see lifelong Tory Europhiles who follow his example ever finding a way back to the party they once loved but now

despise. It is the same story on the other side. Many Tory Brexiteers are privately intending to vote for Nigel Farage, and few are making any effort in tomorrow’s election — which they

regard as unnecessary or even illegitimate. Indeed, both main parties seem to have written off the European Parliament, as though its relevance to Britain were already a thing of the past.

But Brexit has not happened yet. Remainers may rue the day that they handed victory to the Brexit Party in what may prove to have been their last chance to prevent the UK leaving the EU

without a deal. Equally, Brexiteers may discover too late that this was the moment when they delivered a mortal blow to Britain’s oldest party, the standard-bearer of centre-Right politics

in this country, rather than compromise on anything. The stage is now set for a fight to the death over the future of Britain — and of Europe. At the European Parliament, the hitherto

dominant “people’s parties” are likely to be displaced by the populists. This is the way a world ends — a world of brokered deals and messy compromises. Tomorrow may inaugurate a more

democratic but also more confrontational era on the Continent. Here in Britain, whatever happens tomorrow, that brave new world is already upon us.