If the PM is ready to fight back against Brussels then her deal could yet be fixed

Always beware over-optimism. Always fight that instinct, especially when it comes to the UK’s negotiations with Brussels. But just sometimes we can be forgiven for a sudden surging hope that at last this country is about to show our EU partners what we are made of.

After two and a half years of being pushed around in the playground of Brussels, we are turning, blinking, rolling up our sleeves, pushing our spectacles up our noses – and preparing to fight back.

I have heard it from the lips of very senior sources in government – speaking with the authority, it is claimed, of the Prime Minister herself – that this country is about to seek proper binding legal change to the current lamentable withdrawal agreement.

The PM wants to get rid of the backstop; that is, she wants to change the text so as to insert either a sunset clause or a mechanism for the UK to escape without reference to the EU. She is going to fight for a Freedom Clause – right there in article 185 of the protocol or thereabouts – that would finally give us the keys to our own future. If she can change the backstop, then yes, we would be able to do free trade deals, and yes, we would be able to vary our regulation, and yes, the whole of the UK would be able to leave the EU – proud and intact – without leaving Northern Ireland a perpetual hostage.

If she can put in that Freedom Clause or Clauses – and be in no doubt, this means reopening the text of the Treaty itself – then we have defused the booby-trap. We have opened a hole at the bottom of the lobster pot. We will have a way out, and we will be able to negotiate the next phase – the future partnership – without having our hands fettered by the EU, and do the Canada-style free trade deal that will maximise the long term opportunities of Brexit.

This, I am told, is now genuinely the intention of the PM. After a long discussion between her advisers, Team Freedom (said to include her husband Philip and the Chief Whip Julian Smith) has prevailed over Team Remain: those who wanted to do a deal with the Labour party and keep us in the Customs Union.

If that is so, then it is the first piece of unadulterated good Brexit news we have had for a long time. Some, of course, will say I am naïve. They will point out that the backstop is not the only defect of the Withdrawal Agreement – and they are right, even if the backstop is by far the worst feature.

They will say that we are all being gulled, and that there is a bait-and-switch plan to get MPs to back the deal on the condition that the backstop is removed – and then somehow, alas, it will turn out that this condition was impossible to satisfy; and all we will get, after weeks of talks, is another footling letter of “clarification” from Brussels, when we all know that such assurances are utterly worthless when set beside the legal obligations contained in the Treaty.

That is why we need to understand, now, what is behind these rumours of the PM’s change of heart. We need to know whether the Treaty really will be revised. We need to see the Freedom Clauses written down. We need to know exactly what the government is asking for – and we need to hear it directly from the Prime Minister herself.

If the cynics are right – and there is no such intention to change the Treaty, and it is all a smoke and mirrors job – then I am frankly reconciled to the consequences.

I can see that some MPs may be tempted by this week’s Kill-Brexit amendments – Cooper, Spelman and so on – but in the end I do not believe that they can or will prevail. Whatever these anti-Brexit voices may claim, the government ultimately has sufficient prerogative to deliver on its most important mandate, and the Remainers know deep down that we must all comply, as we have promised so many times, with the will of the people.

If MPs really vote to delay Brexit (a thin disguise for killing it off) they will risk an incalculable backlash from those who voted leave. And if by rejecting that option we are increasing the chances of “no deal”, or leaving without the PM’s agreement – I certainly don’t think that would be the end of the world; far from it.

The closer we have got to “no deal”, the less terrifying it has become. We would more than manage – not least since there would inevitably be a standstill arrangement during which we would continue with the existing zero-tariff and zero-quota terms until those could be formalised in a new Free Trade Agreement. So yes, I would be happy with no deal, more than happy – but I would rather a deal that brought Tories together, Leavers and Remainers, and that united the House of Commons.

Go back to that debate in Hansard and see how many people, Labour and Tory – even those who voted for the deal – attacked the backstop.

Listen to what Barnier is saying now – accepting that in the event of No Deal there could be checks away from the Irish border, and no need for any kind of physical infrastructure. If that is the case, then why on earth have we got the backstop? What is it doing there? It is just a fossil, a relic of an earlier passage of negotiation in which the UK failed properly to stick up for its long term interests.

That backstop is dead, rejected by the biggest ever parliamentary majority; and that is why I hope and pray that I am right about the intentions of Number 10.

If we mean it, if we really try, I have no doubt that the EU will give us the Freedom Clause we need. So now is the time to stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood and get on that trusty BAE 146 and go back to Brussels and get it.

And if the PM secures that change – a proper UK-sized perforation in the fabric of the backstop itself - I have no doubt that she will have the whole country full-throatedly behind her.