The complexity of the Brexit negotiations, and the division and incompetence in the Government, has created a conventional wisdom that no deal is the real trauma facing Britain. This is not just unwise but dangerous.

The growing focus on the possibility of no deal has already shone a spotlight on the contradictions of the Brexit project: warnings of food and medical supplies out of control; the troubled Seventies as a model for border control in Northern Ireland; the federation of Japanese companies expressing complete exasperation at the negotiating approach. So much for “control”.

Three-quarters of the British public now believe the Government is handling the negotiations badly. The litany of delusion and splits has made pity for the Prime Minister her chief negotiating asset with our European allies.

There will no doubt be more deadlocks, more failed meetings, and further talk of no deal. But there is a far bigger danger than no deal — a bigger game is at play.

Strategic Brexiteers such as Michael Gove have figured it out, and the rest of us need take on the more likely threat: a bad deal that no one voted for.

This bigger game was highlighted by former chief British diplomat Sir Ivan Rogers: it is that being an inch outside the European system is a million miles from being an inch inside. Clever Brexiteers have twigged to this. They are completely focused on getting out of the EU next March. Then there will be attacks on social, economic and environmental rights guaranteed by our EU membership, as being a “third country” in our own continent comes home to roost.

The real danger now is that the catastrophe of no deal becomes the point of reference — and leverage — for Theresa May’s bad deal. I think she will eventually agree a minimalist (and complicated) package with the EU, kicking tough issues into the transition period. She will then turn public and political fear of no deal into moral and political pressure to get MPs into line.

No deal will go from being a threat to the Government, to a stick wielded by the Government to gain support for its botched plan. EU negotiators may also warn Britain, and parliaments around Europe, to vote for the plan. Here is why we should not allow ourselves to be cornered like this.

The Government’s calamitous triggering of Article 50 without a plan for our exit was clearly a terrible error. But the Article 50 legislation also says that, by agreement, the remaining countries could agree to put off the departure date. And I know that the EU is a master at putting off calamitous events. It is already coping with populist insurgencies internally, plus a revanchist Russia and dismissive America externally, so doesn’t need a Brexit calamity.

No deal would be much worse for Britain than for the EU, but there is no way the EU will watch idly as its third biggest economy drops off a cliff. It’s just too dangerous. The idea that governments around Europe, including our own, are going to sit on their hands between a defeat of a negotiated package in the autumn and our departure on March 29 is not credible.

Contrary to the Brexiteer narrative, the EU will not buckle, but it could buy time. And no sane British government, which includes the current administration, whatever its defects, would take the country over the brink.

"Three-quarters of the British public now believe the Government is handling the negotiations badly"

The challenges of a democratic rethink pale compared with the danger of ploughing ahead with a bad deal. The package that emerges in the next few months will satisfy no one. Far from healing divisions, it will exacerbate them, while undermining British prosperity at the same time.

MPs will be under huge pressure to swallow their doubts. They will be told that details can be sorted out in the transition. But this is an illusion. The political declaration added to the divorce agreement — where the alleged benefits of the deal will reside — will not be binding. Once we leave then we really are in no man’s land.

So it’s time for some clarity about the fact that the alternative to a bad deal is not no deal, it’s a people’s vote. As Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said last week, it’s a chance for the British people to take the time to decide whether they support a Brexit different from what was promised — with a public spending squeeze not a dividend, and new blockages on trade, not the new deals that were imagined.

Far from being the “gross betrayal” of democracy claimed by the Prime Minister yesterday, or the prelude to civil disobedience, a people’s vote would show a serious determination to engage the will of the people.

Things did not need to work out like this after the referendum. The mood on the continent was summed up as: it’s a pity we have to do it, but let’s do it with minimum disruption. If that attitude had been matched by a British government willing to work across party lines, uniting people in a practical and common sense way, there was room for a Brexit I would have deplored but nonetheless accepted.

But that is not where we are. So Parliament’s responsibility in the coming months is grave. No one voted for the package on offer. They should be given the chance to do so. No deal is not an excuse to avoid their verdict.