Keeping ‘no deal’ as an option is not the same as advocating it

The DUP MP’s theatrical style and blunt message is not to everyone’s tastes, and indeed has made him enemies.

But not infrequently Mr Wilson uses the sort of frank language that is necessary and even apt.

He says it would be “bonkers” to take a ‘no deal’ Brexit off the table, as the various political parties at Westminster have demanded of Theresa May. Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader, has gone a step further and made that demand a pre-condition for even engaging in talks with the prime minister about possible future co-operation to resolve the Brexit crisis.

Aside from the absurdity that Mr Corbyn previously advertised his willingness to talk with terrorists as a sign of his far-sightedness and his political savvy, yet will not meet Mrs May in the national interest, the demand that no deal by ruled out is one that she must reject.

It is, as Mr Wilson says, a self-evidently bad tactical decision to rule out no deal. It ensures that the EU will not budge. But that logic is not new, and has applied all along: Mervyn King, the distinguished former governor of the Bank of England, was fiercely critical of the government’s failure to plan for no deal, and its failure to make clear to the EU that it was willing to countenance no deal.

Showing such willingness and preparedness is quite different from wanting no deal, or advocating it.

The situation that the UK is now in is critical, and Mrs May is right to engage in dialogue with opposition parties, but right also to keep all options open, including no deal.

The clock is close to running out, but that cannot mean that the UK capitulates to the EU on all fronts for the sole reason that such an approach might avoid no deal. So it might, but it will also store up potentially even bigger problems in the near future, when the implications of such capitulation become clear to the voting public.