Theresa May’s government will finally collapse if just three more Tory MPs defect

When Anna Soubry says that if she and her fellow Conservative defectors do their job properly there won’t be a Tory party, these are no idle words. For starters, they will soon get their chance to bring down the Conservative government.

Never forget that Theresa May leads a minority administration. It would take a few more Tory rebels (they may arrive sooner than we think) to eliminate the prime minister’s nominal majority – that is, the one she cobbled together with the help of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) after her disastrous snap election in 2017. Every Tory MP who decides they have had enough and joins the Independent Group is liberated from the duty to vote against any formal vote of no confidence in Her Majesty’s government.

Indeed, Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston can now be safely counted as among the most determined to bring May’s ill-starred administration down.

The fall of the government, in other words, is now a much more realistic prospect than it was even a few weeks ago when Jeremy Corbyn last had a rather quixotic go at toppling the prime minister. The irony is that he might now pull his punches (for reasons known only to himself) when he could actually force an election.

Even more potent, in reality, is that the mere threat to bring the government down and force a general election will force May and her cabinet to listen to the vast majority of the House of Commons that wishes to rule out a no-deal Brexit – and to do so immediately. It also brings closer, for that reason, a Final Say referendum, if Labour can be persuaded to support such a policy in return for an early general election.

It would be strange, though not inconceivable, that Corbyn and his team could come to some sort of accommodation with Chuka Umunna and his band of merry Labour rebels, though tribal instincts and the sheer raw emotional damage caused by the Labour split doesn’t augur well for it. The Independent Group, for their part, are determined to prevent Corbyn becoming prime minster. And Corbyn is actually pro-Brexit anyway.

Where all that resolves itself is anyone’s guess. At any rate, both sides will have to ask themselves whether their personal animosity and differences over issues such as antisemitism are more or less important than what they might hope to achieve on Europe.

The optimistic point here, though, is that they all (with a handful of Labour MPs excepted) genuinely reject either a no-deal Brexit or Theresa May’s Brexit deal.

In the event of a vote of no confidence in the government, all the opposition parties and factions can be expected to vote together as a bloc. They are within touching distance of being able to deprive May of power. That is why the loss of only three Conservative MPs from her strength carries such a huge significance for the prime minister.

The “three amigos” possess, almost literally, 10 times as much leverage as the hard men and women of the European Research Group. They do so because they reflect a balance of opinion in the Commons that is stacked, on a rough guess, at about 100 MPs at most in favour of no deal, and the remaining 550 (give or take the speaker, a vacancy, a suspension and absentionist Sinn Fein) against it: a majority of well over 400.

The Brexit brake lever is right there in front of them, ready to pull. Question is: will they use it before it is too late?