GOVERNMENT insiders have promised to exact “medieval” whipping methods to get resistant Tory MPs through the Aye Lobby this afternoon and heave Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal over the line.

Thumbscrews or the rack were not specified but it could take some pretty extreme cajoling and physical encouragement to get certain members of the Spartan tendency of the Brexiteer ERG faction to back the Prime Minister’s plan.

There are 26 Spartans who serially opposed Theresa May’s attempt to get Britain out of the EU and who are among the targets for the Government whips. But many are psychologically tied to the Democratic Unionists Party, whom some regard as the Unionists’ Unionists.

As the Prime Minister was meeting and phoning individual Tory Spartans to get them to back the deal, the DUP’s Sammy Wilson was on the airwaves and social media urging his Conservative soulmates to do the opposite.

Insisting the deal would “spark further Nationalist sentiment in Scotland,” Mr Wilson tweeted: “Conservative & Unionist MPs must take a stand for the Union and join us in rejecting this deal.”

Another key target group, and arguably the ones who could seal the fate of Mr Johnson’s Brexit deal, are the Labour MPs who represent Leave constituencies.

Earlier this month, 19 wrote to Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk suggesting they would back a deal if the EU27 agreed one. Well, it has done and yesterday names were slipping out one by one of comrades who were willing to defy their leader and back Boris.

Jeremy Corbyn promised not to remove the whip from any rebel but attempt the gentle art of persuasion to get his colleagues back on side. It was left to Momentum’s hard man Jon Lansman to make the threat; that any rebel would face being purged and replaced with a “new, socialist Labour candidate”.

Nicola Sturgeon materialised at Westminster to up the political ante by not-so-gently suggesting the Labour leader was saying one thing while doing another.

Deploying an old political technique, she suggested, rather unconvincingly, that she suspected, more out of sorrow than anger of course, that the chief comrade was “giving nods and winks” to the Labour rebels to get the Johnson deal over the line.

“I hope I'm wrong about that,” she told Westminster hacks, “but I'm simply surmising from what I'm hearing, you know piecing things together.”

Underlining how the Labour rebels could be the key group to get Mr Johnson’s deal over the line, last night the PM announced some fresh concessions over their concerns on workers’ rights.

The Government said that in future, ministers would make a Commons statement explaining where any new bills could affect employment rights and compatibility with EU standards.

It would be obliged to report regularly on new EU measures and whether the UK planned to take action to mirror them. And the move would be subject to a vote by MPs.

One potential Labour rebel, Ronnie Campbell, who had been urged by his party leader unsuccessfully to abstain, had earlier hinted something was in the pipeline, saying: “I understand there is going to be something put forward that anything on workers’ rights has to come back to Parliament. We will wait and see whether that materialises and if the Tories agree to it. If they do, I'll be happy on that."

If, later today, Mr Johnson manages somehow to get his deal through, then the Brexit agony is not over. There is the little matter of legislation, of getting the new Withdrawal Agreement Bill through Parliament before, of course, October 31.

This in itself will be a battleground of amendments and parliamentary votes. They look set to even continue after Hallowe’en given there are a number of Brexit bills outstanding on fisheries, agriculture and trade.

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But if the cause is lost, then, on top of a Queen’s Speech set to be voted down in any case, the Tory Government could face a no-confidence vote in the coming days. Or not. If the opposition forces continue to wrangle, then the zombie government lurches on into the distance.

Yet as with the entire mind-numbing saga of Brexit, there could well be a Machiavellian twist.

That even if Mr Johnson loses, he might eventually win.

That he could go into a future General Election, whenever it comes, saying that he had done absolutely everything, even broken the law and dragged the Queen into politics, to get Brexit over the line and yet still those pesky Remain forces had blocked him.

But as MPs prepare for today’s Commons drama with the result teetering on a knife edge, the irony could be that despite all the Government whips’ medieval methods and all the thought-through political arguments, the thing that might squeak Mr Johnson’s Brexit deal over the line will be the overwhelming public mood and the voters’ message to politicians.

They are simply fed up with Brexit and want their lives back.