Theresa May’s plans for a no deal Brexit have turned out to be her best weapon

Cabinet meets this morning to set out preparations for Britain leaving the EU without a deal

The cabinet meets this morning as the tide seems to be turning in Theresa May’s favour. The hard Brexiteers’ tactic has blown up in their faces. They urged the prime minister to step up preparations for leaving the EU without a deal, to convince the EU that we would be prepared to walk away from the talks if we don’t get what we want.

Instead, those preparations succeeded only in frightening the living daylights out of the British public, which might help persuade them that any deal would be better than stockpiling medicines and lorries queueing from Dover to Birmingham.

Today’s special cabinet meeting on no-deal preparations will only intensify this new version of project fear – a project made all the more credible by being based on taking sensible precautions in case the Brexit talks collapse in failure.

Hence the problems faced by Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, as he was sent out to face the BBC this morning. He was one of those demanding more planning for no deal to strengthen our bargaining position, and now he is trying to reassure us that our mobile roaming charges will still be cheap after Brexit, but many of the 28 papers to be published today are likely to contain some alarming scenarios.

As we approach the final phase of the negotiations, the horrors of a no-deal Brexit will concentrate minds. Mostly British minds, but it will concentrate EU27 minds too. No deal would be worse for us (and the Irish), but it would be bad for others too.

More relevant for the EU27 is Britain’s threat to walk away with our £36bn exit fee, which Theresa May repeated at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday. Her words were hard to interpret, because she started by saying, “We are a country that honours our obligations,” which is code for, “We’ll pay up.” But she went on to say, “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed; without a deal, the position changes,” which is code for, “No deal, no money.” Raab made it more explicit on the Today programme this morning: our payment would be “significantly, substantially lower” than the £36bn provisionally agreed.

This is merely a statement of the obvious: a large chunk of the £36bn is our subscription for membership of the single market, which would continue during the transition period to the end of 2020 if there is a deal. If there isn’t a deal, we won’t pay a subscription. It’s obvious, but has to be phrased tactfully. So there may be a deal to be had.

We cannot read too much into what Michel Barnier, the EU negotiator, or Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU Commission president, or Emmanuel Macron, the French president, say. On alternate days, the British media run headlines saying they are prepared to offer us a deal “like no other” (of course it would be: no country has ever left the EU before), or that the four freedoms of the EU single market are “sacrosanct”. I’m not sure which it is today, but none of it means much until the negotiations hit the compromise zone.

Then, Theresa May might manage to negotiate a deal. Goodness knows what it would be but as Charles Grant, an informed Brussels-watcher, pointed out yesterday it may well include elements of the Chequers plan that the European Rebellion Group of Tory MPs dislike so much.

But today’s no-deal planning, for which they agitated so much, will be critical in winning the argument against them. In the end, if there is a deal, almost regardless of what it is, I think the House of Commons and the European Parliament will vote for it.

Theresa May will have to close off all other options. If the option of delaying Brexit to allow for a further referendum is defeated in the Commons, then MPs will face a stark choice between voting for May’s deal or for the dystopian post-nuclear wasteland that will be laid out this afternoon in the 28 government papers on advice for a no-deal Brexit.