‘IN the name of God go”. So said the Tory MP Leo Amery, urging his leader, Neville Chamberlain, to resign following the Norway crisis in 1940. Chamberlain, as the author Robert Harris has pointed out, was a decent and honourable man. But he had to go because it was impossible for Parliament and the country to move forward while the architect of appeasement remained in charge. Theresa May should do the same, before the country goes mad with Brexit frustration.

Her withdrawal agreement has been rejected by the biggest majorities Parliament has ever seen. Her party has been humiliated in the local elections, and is facing an even greater defeat in European elections that she promised would never happen. Brussels regards her as unreliable and unstable. She has lost the confidence of her own MPs, and has been served notice by the chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee.

Senior Tories, like the former leader Iain Duncan Smith, are calling almost daily for the Prime Minister’s departure. Collective Cabinet responsibility has broken down as ministers leak and brief and pursue their own irreconcilable agendas. Even her chief of staff, Gavin Barwel, has had to leave his social media platform because of abuse from Tory colleagues.

It doesn’t get much worse than this. No prime minister in modern history has clung to power so tenaciously. We are told that she doesn’t think any one could do the job any better. That she has a right to remain in office because she has conducted the negotiations thus far and has a right to see them through.

But this is a ludicrous, self-serving argument. No football club would allow a manager to remain in charge after such a succession of disastrous defeats, with the players fighting amongst themselves and the fans leaving the stadium. It’s extremely hard to imagine anyone doing the job any worse.

Mrs May is not so much a caretaker prime minister, as Labour’s John McDonnell described her at the weekend, but a squatter in No Ten. Had it not been for the Fixed Term Parliament Act, she would have gone long since. Parliament is deadlocked while her dead hand is on the controls. The latest futile discussions with Labour over Brexit confirm that there can be no movement unless and until she goes.

Labour would be foolish to agree any kind of deal with Theresa May. Almost any likely successor be it Jeremy Hunt, Dominic Raab or Boris Johnson, will disown any deal that this discredited Prime Minister has cobbled together. They won’t be held to any agreement, and nor of course can parliament.

Even if there were to be a deal on a permanent customs union, as Labour has been demanding, there is zero chance of it being accepted by the DUP or Tory MPs. They’ll reject anything that looks like BINO – Brexit In Name Only. A significant number of Labour MPs would agree with them.

The Government might agree to keeping certain workers rights and environmental protections for the time being. That is also part of the Prime Minister’s leaked offer to Labour. However, a future Tory leader would argue that the country’s hands cannot be tied by any deal made before Brexit has become a reality. This is not some legally-binding treaty, but a temporary expedient to get Mrs May’s deal “over the line”.

Then there is the referendum. We have been told, somewhat improbably, that the Prime Minister has been “scenario planning” a three-option referendum involving her deal, remain and no deal. But she is never going to call a People’s Vote. If Mrs May went back on her promises not to hold a repeat ballot, there would be such a catastrophic split in the Conservative Party that it would be destroyed as a political force for a generation.

So why is Jeremy Corbyn pretending to negotiate a Brexit deal with a Prime Minister who could never deliver? Well, Labour was exposed to the immense frustration of the British voters during the local election campaign. Remainers and Leavers alike are appalled by the deadlock over Brexit and want to move on.

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Labour doesn’t want to have its fingerprints on any form of Brexit deal, but nor does it want to be accused of failing to honour the result of the 2016 referendum. Two years ago, Labour voted overwhelmingly to trigger Article 50 which made the UK’s departure from the EU legally binding. Labour needs to appear willing to negotiate, but wants the blame to lie firmly with the Prime Minister when talks fail.

Coming to an agreement with Mrs May, even a good one, would make Mr Corbyn an accessory to Brexit. And it’s not at all clear that the Labour leadership actually wants another referendum. It has anyway been relegated to the status of a backstop against a “bad Tory Brexit”. Shadow Cabinet figures like Diane Abbott believe a repeat referendum would probably result in another Leave vote. But Mr Corbyn is acutely aware that his legions of youthful fans in Momentum support a People’s Vote. So he tries to look both ways at once.

This may be enough to get Labour through the European elections. Many Conservative constituency associations, and MPs like Boris Johnson, are refusing to campaign for these elections on the grounds that they should never have taken place. It looks like delivering a Tory wipe-out. Labour is not going to do particularly well either, but if, by pursuing a policy of studied ambiguity, it can hold onto some Leave and some Remain voters, that will do nicely.

But it won’t be so nice for the rest of us. Mrs May has to go, even if, as happened with Chamberlain, the successor is a divisive character like Winston Churchill. Mr Johnson is the party favourite to take over, and while many of us might find that an unattractive option, it would at least force the issue to some kind of resolution. The Conservative Party would be divided, and the result would be a General Election. And the sooner the better.