BETTER late than never. MPs in Westminster will at last take control of the Brexit process today after nearly three years of being spectators to the greatest political crisis in half a century. No one says it’ll be easy.

Today’s votes could end in a shambles as Parliament votes for contradictory motions, or no motions at all, as happened over the similar multiple-choice ballot on Lords reform in 2003.

No one is clear even about the voting procedure. The Prime Minister has said that she will probably ignore the result. The press is likely to turn on MPs as the “jobbing PM” Sir Oliver Letwin and his team start acting as a surrogate government. They lack the resources of the Government and the civil service and things may look pretty shambolic.

It’s a bit like deciding the future of the country on penalty kicks after extra time.

So the most important thing will be for our battered MPs – who feel demoralised and even threatened – to keep their nerve. This is a kind of revolution, in that we haven’t seen the Government usurped by Parliament in this way in modern times. Some have said that it’s just like MPs’ Private Members Bills, but that is facile. This is not just an individual piece of backbench legislation; it is the very future of the country that has been taken out of the hands of Theresa May.

In our political system, the Government proposes and Parliament disposes. It is the Government that decides on the legislative programme and the order of business in the House and the Commons scrutinises it. Mrs May’s lasting constitutional legacy will be to have overturned this convention.

The former Labour MP Austin Mitchell used to say of Parliament’s role: “The Government is a steam-roller, our job is to heckle it.” MPs are using the steam-roller of parliamentary sovereignty, supposedly the fount of legitimacy in our system, to crush a prime minister who has refused to listen.

READ MORE: To stop May’s Thelma and Louise dash for the No Deal cliff edge, MPs must now take back control

Perhaps she will announce her resignation today, but she will not go with dignity. Her mistake from the start was to fail to explore a consensus in Parliament and instead seek a Brexit that would suit the extreme Right of her party. Her wilfull sectarianism led to two of the greatest parliamentary defeats in history and to national humiliation.

Parliament must try to do in a few

days what she should have done two years ago.

The indicative options are not entirely clear at the time of writing, but they will presumably include Labour’s customs union; Norway Plus; Common Market 2.0; a Canada-style free trade agreement; and then revoke, a referendum and no deal. None might prevail in the first round of voting so the provisional government of Brexit, led by Sir Oliver, will schedule further voting rounds for next week. The hope is that, by a process of attrition – allowing the least favoured options to drop off the list– MPs will arrive at a consensus.

It’s pretty clear already where that consensus lies. And the irony is that it’s built on Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement and Irish Backstop. Almost unnoticed last week, Labour dropped its principled opposition to the Withdrawal Agreement. Labour now insists that its demands relate, not to the legally-binding Withdrawal Agreement, but to the accompanying Political Declaration It wants a permanent customs union and regulatory alignment with the European single market.

It is a measure of the Prime Minister’s failure of leadership that she did not exploit Labour’s swerve by making concessions on the Political Declaration, which is anyway aspirational and non-binding. Had she not been so focussed on placating the Brextremists, she could have done a deal with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is, after all, pro-Brexit; perhaps by offering a cross-party convention that would explore Labour’s ideas seriously.

Only her red lines and dogged determination to rule out freedom of movement prevented an opening.

The first thing most MPs will probably agree on today is Brexit. This will dismay many Remainers and supporters of a People’s Vote because, as I read it, there is every likelihood that a repeat referendum would be lost along with no deal and Canada Plus. Labour has a manifesto commitment to deliver Brexit, and that is always going to be in the back of Mr Corbyn’s mind when it comes to making concessions and compromises.

A People’s Vote could remain an option if Labour continues to back the Kyle/Wilson proposal to put the Prime Minister’s deal, or whatever replaces it, to the people. But the Labour leader will be intensely reluctant to go that particular mile.

At least one other indicative motion will propose something very close to Labour’s plan: namely Common Market 2.0, also known as the Norway Plus option. The only difference is that the latter, supported by the Tory MP Nick Boles and Labour’s Stephen Kinnock, involves formal membership of the European single market and the customs union.

It has many drawbacks, not least the fact that many believe it is Bino: Brexit in name only. But it has the merit of being the one option, short of Mrs May’s deal, that Brussels will accept without further negotiation.

The SNP and the Liberal Democrats want a People’s Vote but, if that is rejected (and the numbers don’t look good), they will agree to Norway Plus as the next best thing.

It’s going to be very hairy today in Parliament; “squeaky bum” time as one Tory MP described it yesterday. And there is also the possibility that the European Research Group could ride to the Prime Minister’s rescue.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has decided that “vassalage” under Mrs May’s deal may be better than no Brexit at all. Tory ultras such as Suella Braverman and Bill Cash won’t capitulate and the Democratic Unionist Party still seems resolutely opposed but the tectonic plates are shifting.

We can’t rule out a last minute attempt by the Prime Minister – that’s the official one, not Sir Oliver – to get her deal accepted as Parliament goes into injury time.