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Hours after an anonymous insider called the extremists of the Conservative Party a "death cult", Downing Street denied saying it.

That often happens when something is true.

ERG deputy Steve Baker is reputedly the inspiration for this new cult, despite lacking any obvious charisma. A born-again Christian, he was most upset to find out about his unwanted promotion while at church on Sunday, and No10 offered "clarification" that the claim had nothing to do with them.

Which does not mean that the original comment was not made by someone else.

And this is what we have come to: 25 days before what we are assured is apocalypse, and the provisional wing of the Tory Party is getting its knickers in a twist not about the backstop but about being called names.

Boys, boys, boys: if you don't want to be called a death cult, you need to stop acting like a death cult.

(Image: Dan Kitwood)

The Venn diagram of people who like Brexit, and those who don't like Islam, has a pretty big overlap. Such people generally react furiously to everything, so the suggestion they have anything in common with Islamic State will really make them spew.

But it's true. Brexit has brought out the worst in people, and on the backbenches of Westminster it's flushed out the wrong'uns who'd never get our attention otherwise, just like ISIS was a magnet for the halitosis-ridden Jihadi John. He made the world quake at the knees, when if we had found ourselves sitting next to him on the bus we'd simply have moved seats.

There is a lot of common ground between people who campaign for Brexit, and those who campaigned for a fundamentalist hellhole in the desert...

1. They both want apocalypse

(Image: X80001)

ISIS claimed that Jesus - a prophet in Islam - would return at judgement day to slay the antichrist. The terror cult twisted some old prophecies to claim the last battle would happen at Dabiq in Syria, and Jesus would take the chosen back to heaven. In other words: start killing infidels now, people, and clean up before he gets here.

Al Qaeda believed it would happen in a few years, but ISIS promised it was imminent. That's why it was based in Syria but sprawled across international borders, it was why people who joined it didn't think about consequences. There would be none, for true believers.

And so to Brexit, which requires belief, breeds zealots, and dreams of a perfect, world which Britain somehow rules with its mouldy jam and second-hand bassoons. Believers don't want a soft apocalypse, or for people to vote again now we know we'll run out of toilet paper in 3 weeks - they want to leave, no deal, no legislation in place, no agreement on EU citizens, medicines, imports, exports, haulage, fishing or anything else. Into chaos we go!

They see all the signs pointing to apocalypse - to societal meltdown, lorry queues, economic collapse, cancelling of the Grand National and dissolution of the United Kingdom itself - and say let's hurry it up, the sunlit uplands are waiting.

2. ISIS had the Beatles. We've got the ERG

(Image: Dan Kitwood)

All of ISIS' success was based on threats. It carried out actual murders, of course, but the chances of an individual being killed was slim unless you were stood between them and the oil wells. The mass military mobilisation, the laws which destroyed our civil liberties and the fear that was caused in millions of hearts by their spectacular raids on the Bataclan or Manchester Arena, were sparked by fear, not facts.

It was a handful of extremists who urged Theresa May to trigger Article 50 without a plan for what to do when it ended. It was the same people who urged her to fight all the way to the Supreme Court for the right for a Prime Minister to act like a medieval king, and ignore the will of Parliament. They threatened her leadership, complained to the BBC it was being unfair, demanded representation in government, and ran away every time government got difficult.

3. They breed stupidity

(Image: BBC)

ISIS told people the nice bits of the Koran weren't true, and the nastier bits were, and they should live according to the Koran. It said gays should be thrown off buildings and non-believers could be beheaded because such murders are described in the verses of the Hadith, which aren't part of the Koran. They called for sharia law, when sharia isn't law, and doesn't ban all the things the Koran says are sinful. It killed anyone who asked questions about this.

The Brexit wingnuts said the nice predictions about our future were true, and the nastier ones were not. They claimed we all believed in things that weren't on the ballot paper.

They defied logic - they demanded we ditch the single market, customs union and even the European Economic Area, then said we should have a deal like Norway or Canada which pay to be in those things. They voted against every deal the Prime Minister suggested, were vile to her, and demanded we leave without paying our bill. Then they demanded the EU give us a deal, be nicer to our PM and trust us to pay in future.

4. They had to bribe people to get on board

(Image: Getty Images)

ISIS promised healthcare, a nice salary and a happy, healthy community.

The Brexit monkeys promised things with a bus, and then said they didn't. They promised an economic boom no-one's noticed, trade deals we haven't got, and a fall in immigration that we don't need.

The PM trying to get all this through Parliament has so far had to buy off MPs on all sides, her own Cabinet, the DUP and has today dropped another billion on urban regeneration in the hope of getting Brexit through.

All she's bought is a hole in the logic of Brexit - if it's such a great idea, why does anyone need to be bribed?

5. They both surrender in the end

(Image: Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft Images)

The international community couldn't agree on whether to kill ISIS from the sky, or up close. Russia and the USA couldn't agree on whether to kill them with Bashar al-Assad's help, or to kill him too. It didn't matter, because belief wore thinner with every beheading, rape, and enslavement. When the holy land failed to materialise, people looked around them and saw they were in a hellhole in the desert, and decided to go home. The last fighters holding out for heaven put on burqas and ran away.

Labour can't agree whether it respects Brexit, or thinks it's stupid. The Tories hate the ERG for harming their Right wing religion, and the EU is looking on perplexed while wishing it could launch a drone strike from a safe distance.

Those who have escaped the clutches of these absolutist religions say apocalypse would be bad, but they can't decide what to do afterwards. And the trouble is that the onlookers wish a plague on all their houses, and many actively hope the apocalypse hurries up so there's something else in the news.

(Image: Getty)

The fact that the news would be about the collapse of the haulage industry, or mass industrial action at car plants, or racists in yellow trousers marching on Parliament, does not seem to bother them. Has Brexit sucked so much gaiety out of the nation that it would rather die?

If the Brexit State proposed by Baker et al came into being, we'd have a Parliament that wasn't sovereign. We'd have a PM who ruled with the power of Henry VIII, a BBC that asked liars to fact-check its reports and a democracy where it was one man, one vote, and just the once.

That's not Britain. It's a fundamentalist hellhole.

But that doesn't mean there's not a bright side. In 25 days' time, the apocalypse probably won't happen. Theresa will probably squeak her deal through when the ERG surrender yet again, and the last few disciples of this unholy mess will pretend it was someone else's idea all along.