BRITAIN can rest easy. The country’s bananas are safe and will not be subject to “malformation or abnormal curvature” following the UK Government’s decision to abandon throwing 4,000 pieces of EU law onto the Brexit bonfire by the year’s end.

So, European Commission regulation 1333/2011 on bendy bananas will, thank heaven, be adopted. A nation will rejoice. But not, alas, the Tory Brexit revolutionaries, who are fuming, accusing Rishi Sunak, their beleaguered leader, of naked treachery.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Savonarola of Brexit and ex-Business Secretary, who initiated the bonfire of Brussels red tape, accused the PM of having “broken his word” to scrap all 4,000 EU laws via a “sunset clause” this December. He claimed the Whitehall “blob” had triumphed.

“I’m afraid,” he complained, “it’s no good being holier-than-thou, if you then end up behaving like a Borgia.”

The pin-striped Old Etonian didn’t specify whether he was referring to Rodrigo or Cesare but both were notorious for corruption, skulduggery and sinfulness. I had no idea the goings-on in Whitehall were quite so full of Renaissance treachery.

Remember during the Conservative leadership contest, the would-be PM posted a campaign video where boxes of EU red tape were enthusiastically fed into a shredder as he pledged to repeal them all in his first 100 days in his bid to out-Brexit Liz Truss.

But the promise always looked undeliverable, particularly as the saner voices grew louder, including those belonging to several seasoned ex-Tory ministers like Ken Clarke, the former Chancellor, and fellow peers Lords Young, Powell and Garnier, who expressed concern that thousands of laws would be automatically scrapped without any discussion or scrutiny.

Critics of the Retained EU Law Bill, say, even with the removal of now just 600 laws, it will still result in significant deregulation. Trade unions have warned about the risks to workers’ rights while environmental groups have expressed concerns about losing legal protections over air pollution standards, water quality and wildlife protection.

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As it began to emerge that Mr Sunak was indeed going to pull back from his key pledge, the faces of his fellow Brexiteers grew redder and redder.

A group of them descended on Downing St and then marched to Chief Whip Simon Hart’s office to vent their anger.

One told the Daily Telegraph: “This is dangerous for Rishi Sunak. He sold himself as someone who was trustworthy and he’s broken that promise. His pool of committed supporters is shallower than it was before.”

And then, remarkably, the Brexit bust-up got even worse. After Kemi Badenoch, the Business and Trade Secretary, revealed the Government’s change of mind in a newspaper article and written statement, she was forced to the Commons to respond to an Urgent Question. Her “tin-eared,” patronising demeanour didn’t help her cause.

She told MPs the Government was still “ending EU supremacy” but was just "changing how we are doing it" to a more “pragmatic” way.

But Ms B really got her colleagues’ backs up when, earlier, she had referred to a private meeting of Tory MPs, noting: “There are too many people who spend a lot of time talking. I need to do the thinking and the doing.” How to win friends and influence people.

What on earth?

In the Commons, Mark Francois, Chairman of the Brexiteer ERG group, couldn’t hide his Victor Meldrew-scale disbelief and blasted: “Secretary of State, what on earth are you playing at?” as he accused her of a “massive climb-down”.

But the most dramatic moment came when the minister responded unwisely to the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s concern about how she hadn’t had the courtesy to tell MPs first about the Government’s almighty U-turn.

When, faking sincerity, Ms B told him she was “very sorry the sequencing we chose was not to your satisfaction”, Sir Lindsay blew his top. “Who do you think you’re speaking to?” he snapped. “I am the defender of this House and these benches on both sides. I am not going to be spoken to by a Secretary of State who is absolutely not accepting my ruling.” MPs gave a collective wince.

One Tory MP told the Politico website her performance was “condescending” and “patronising” while another concluded: “This will not have helped her leadership aspirations.”

It’s been said “all revolutions devour their own children,” so it’s curious to see how the Spartan Brexiteers are tearing strips off each other with abandon, some seven years after the Leave vote. And yet, stupidly, the Brexit in-fighting goes on.

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Yesterday at a pro-Boris Johnson conference in Bournemouth, right-wing Tories heard Priti Patel, another leading Leaver, have a pop at Mr Sunak, regarded by many of her colleagues as the Brexit Brutus to Johnson’s Caesar.

Pointing the finger at the PM for losing all those lovely Tory council seats in England, the ex-Home Secretary also blamed him and others for ousting Boris from power, saying: “They took down a vote-winning political giant.”

Tomorrow will see Mr Sunak hosting Conservative MPs at a Downing St reception aimed at boosting morale following the council election drubbing while Home Secretary Suella Braverman will be the star speaker at another right-wing conference, where an ally said she would present herself as a “purist,” telling The Times: “She would go back to a more radical approach to Brexit. She would want to see the Retained EU Law Bill reinstated and pursued so…we would get a much faster realisation of Brexit.”

Daggers drawn

Later next week, the Government will reveal the 600 EU laws that are going on the Brexit bonfire and there are suggestions over summer when the bill returns to the Commons, the Brexiteer gang, metaphorical daggers drawn, will try to cut out all of the EU red tape and restore it to its former glory.

Remarkably then, as ordinary folk struggle with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis and a general election gets ever nearer, the Tory right-wingers are continuing with their ideological battle over Brexit, doubling down on division, and, in so doing, burning the Conservatives’ chances of re-election. To use a political term, it’s bananas.