The game has changed and the change is permanent. Amid all the Brexit chaos, which has now reached levels of fantasy to which only the pen of Lewis Carroll could have done justice, one significant new fact has emerged. A clean Brexit, probably on WTO terms, is now the likeliest outcome – something which was not credibly the case even a month ago.
Until very recently, it looked as if the political class would be permitted to play its usual game of cross-party stitch-up, a ploy familiar to legacy parties. According to this scenario, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn would cobble together a deal on the Customs Union (which in any case is already contained within May’s withdrawal treaty).
Parliament would then nod through this non-Brexit, the EU would approve it and this fait accompli would scupper a genuine Brexit, with Leavers unable to do anything about it. What the Remainer political class did not realise was that the ground was shifting beneath its feet, the whole political environment was being transformed over the course of the past month and any prospect of averting full-blooded Brexit had become difficult with the rise of the Brexit Party.
