Patrick O'Flynn is an MEP, a former UKIP member, one of an exclusive band in the party who were never actually leader, almost everybody else has had a go at what is surely the most thankless job in politics. O'Flynn resigned in 2018 to join the Social Democratic Party after Gerard Batten, the current UKIP leader appointed Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson as an advisor. The former political editor of The Daily Express has been writing for Brexit Central and encapsulates the Tories awful dilemma.
He says unless the government delivers Brexit on March 29th the 'game will be up'. Of course, the dilemma for the Conservative party is that if they do deliver Brexit, the 'game will be up'. I was going to say he neatly sums up the dilemma Mrs May is in but for a newspaperman he uses one of the longest and most convoluted sentences you are likely to see outside primary school:
"I would like the many Conservative readers of BrexitCentral to understand one thing: if, after all your Government’s unredeemed Brexit promises, after recklessly creating a hung parliament not formally bound by its predecessor’s commitments, after cravenly agreeing to the EU’s preferred sequencing of negotiations, after signing up to the indefinite Irish backstop, after your Prime Minister promised clean Brexit even as Olly Robbins was – on her instruction – getting down and dirty in Brussels, after not taking No Deal preparations seriously until the eleventh hour, after coming back to the Commons with a veritable “turd” of a deal that was always going to be heavily defeated, if after all that your party fails to take the UK out of the EU on 29th March, you will have been well and truly rumbled. The game will be up".
O'Flynn describes the deal as a 'turd' and is clearly pushing to leave without one (a deal that is not a turd).
This is the problem. The Tories are in trouble if they don't deliver Brexit and in trouble if they do. There are no good choices. Either outcome will be a vote loser. No deal is frequently described as being a disaster but Brexiteers think revoking Article 50 would be even worse politically.
Brexit for Mrs May is perhaps the modern manifestation of the old proverb, you might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. This expression refers to the old punishment for stealing sheep, which was hanging no matter what the age or size of the animal. Hence if you're going to be punished anyway you might as well make it worthwhile.
The Conservatives have already committed the offence by organising and owning Brexit and they are going to be punished at some future date. If revoking Article 50 produces the terrible reaction at the polls that we are told, the PM might as well do it since at least some good will come of it as far as the economy and people's jobs are concerned.
Will she do it? Probably not.
