All battle, no plan

It looks as if the Conservative party is already at war. Fifty or so Brexiteer Tory MPs openly meet to discuss deposing the Prime Minister —  yet they have no strategy and (at present) no chance of defeating her in a confidence vote. On Twitter, Tory backbenchers and even ministers can be found threatening to destroy each other. This isn’t just about personality. In the last few months, the question of what Britain’s relationship with the EU should be and who should be Prime Minister have fused together — so the most divisive issue in British post-war politics has been combined with a drawn-out leader-ship contest.

The Prime Minister has produced a plan: the Chequers proposal. It is hard to name its ardent supporters but easy enough to identify its most prominent critic: Boris Johnson. Since resigning from the cabinet, he has kept up a regular verbal barrage against it — a campaign that has had some success.