T HE REBEL boot is on the other foot. For years the most prominent Tory troublemakers were Eurosceptics, who were willing to do anything to get Britain out of the European Union. Now the Eurosceptics have captured the government and the most prominent rebels are Euro-moderates, who are willing to do anything to prevent Britain from leaving the EU without a deal.

The insurgents are about 40 strong, though not all will vote in the same way at the same time. They are a looser alliance than the old rebels who, in the form of the European Research Group, had their own whips and party line. But Boris Johnson’s increasingly hardline policies have stiffened their spines. The alliance contains a collection of Tory grandees, including five former cabinet ministers, and a smaller group of escapees, such as Sir Oliver Letwin and Guto Bebb, who have decided to stand down at the next election. Ruth Davidson’s resignation as leader of the Scottish Conservatives has weakened Toryism north of the border and provided the rebels with another example of the cost of Mr Johnson’s policies.

The alliance contains some of the oddest rebels ever assembled in politics. Philip Hammond, the closest thing the alliance has got to a leader, joined the Conservative Party when he was still at school and spent the past nine years as transport secretary, foreign secretary and chancellor of the exchequer, before quitting in the last days of Theresa May’s government. His understated manner and fondness for economic orthodoxy earned him the nickname “spreadsheet Phil” (though he is much more entertaining in private than his public persona suggests). When he voted against the government on the Northern Ireland bill last month it was the first time he had broken with his party in 22 years, which is not something that could be said of many Brexiteers.

In his essay of 1919 on “Politics as a Vocation”, Max Weber made a distinction between the “ethic of responsibility” and the “ethic of conviction”. The ethic of responsibility is all about pragmatism—doing what you can to keep the show on the road—whereas the ethic of conviction is all about moral purity. Mr Hammond is the embodiment of the first, just as Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s chief of staff and, according to his critics, unelected deputy prime minister, is the embodiment of the second.

David Gauke is a solicitor by profession who ended up as Lord Chancellor. Dominic Grieve is another lawyer—a QC, no less—who served as attorney-general. Greg Clark is a former management consultant who was a quietly effective secretary of state for business. The only member of the alliance who has the whiff of the rebel about him is Rory Stewart, who spent years wandering around dangerous bits of the world as a latter-day Lawrence of Arabia. But Mr Stewart is also a worshipper of British institutions, whose CV includes working as a tutor to Princes William and Harry and serving in the army and the Foreign Office.

These odd rebels bring a formidable range of skills to their mission. As a former foreign secretary and chancellor, Mr Hammond has a network of contacts both in Britain and the wider EU . He also knows as much as anybody about the potential impact of a no-deal Brexit on business. Mr Gauke is one of the most popular MP s in Parliament—“clever”, “subtle” and “humorous” are a few of the adjectives that fellow members shower on him. Sir Oliver and Mr Grieve are both veterans of the “May wars” to prevent the government from steamrolling Parliament and have created a store of templates and strategies. Mr Grieve also has close relations with Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s Brexit spokesman. Mr Stewart single-handedly lit up the recent Tory leadership campaign with his improvised walkabouts (which he has recently resumed) and excited a new generation of young people about Conservatism. “Rory is a bit of a messiah,” says an MP who has known him for years, “but at least messiahs have a way of making converts.”

The rebels should be under no illusion about how difficult their job is. This is not a normal government. It is dominated by brutal ideologues who will use any smear (“traitor”, “collaborator”, “fifth-columnist”) to defeat their opponents. On August 28th Mr Johnson made the extraordinary move of asking the queen to suspend Parliament from September 11th to October 14th, in an attempt to reduce the number of days that MP s have to prevent a no-deal exit on October 31st—a move that Mr Hammond described as a “constitutional outrage” and “profoundly undemocratic”.

But the rebels have two important things on their side. The most obvious is numbers. Suspending Parliament is a sign of Mr Johnson’s weakness, not his strength. The prime minister has a working majority of only one. The bulk of MP s are opposed to a no-deal Brexit. And Parliament has a good record of winning its battles with the executive. Mrs May lost three times, despite throwing all the government’s time and resources for two years behind getting her deal through. The second thing on the rebels’ side is fear. Several senior members of Mr Johnson’s government are privately terrified that his “do or die” tactics may sink the economy and destroy the Conservative Party for a generation. As Brexit day approaches and the pound sinks, bankruptcies rise, shortages loom and civil disorder resumes in Northern Ireland, the people who crack may not be the Europeans but some unexpected Johnson loyalists.

In search of a cause

The rebels’ deeper problem is what happens to them after October 31st. The Eurosceptics reshaped British politics because they had a single aim and unflinching determination. The Euro-moderates are united on little other than preventing no-deal. Some want a second referendum to overturn Brexit, some want a version of Mrs May’s deal, and some may even want a long-term realignment of politics which would consign the Brexiteers to a party of their own. The alliance could easily fracture as rapidly as it has formed. It is worryingly easy to lose control of a party to the men and women of conviction. It is much more difficult to win it back. ■