Ben Bradley was expelled from his primary school, apparently for being “cheeky”. The Tory MP hasn’t yet learnt his lesson, it seems, given he found himself donating what is believed to be a five-figure sum to his local food bank after managing to defame Jeremy Corbyn by tweeting about allegations over the Labour leader’s links with a Czechoslovakian spy.

An old political contemporary of the Mansfield MP told me the only surprise was that “they made him a vice-chair [of the party] when he’s barely got his political milk teeth. They didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.”

The Conservatives don’t seem to know what they’re getting themselves into on a number of fronts at the moment. It’s not just the Corbyn spy story. It’s also Theresa May’s contradictory review of higher education, and her willingness to talk about big social problems while failing to introduce policies that might solve them.

Mr Bradley’s mistakes threaten only to bring down his political career, but No 10 is currently mulling a strategy that could accidentally bring down the Government.

Remainers in the Conservative party such as Anna Soubry, Ken Clarke, Nicky Morgan and Stephen Hammond have teamed up with centrist Labour MPs including Chuka Umunna to table amendments to both the Taxation (Cross-Border Trade) Bill and the Trade Bill that would force Britain to be part of a customs union with the European Union after Brexit. This directly contradicts current Tory policy, which is that there won’t be a customs union of any kind. Today, Mr Corbyn confirmed that Labour now wants a customs union with the European Union.

Mrs May has deployed her classic tactic of putting a hard thing off for as long as possible and hoping it will somehow go away in the meantime by delaying these votes for several weeks. But if this amendment passes, then she will not be able to negotiate free trade deals with non-EU countries as she would like. And that’s why those around her are urging her to take the highest-stakes route possible to stop the amendment from succeeding by making the vote a matter of confidence.

One Cabinet minister says he is confident that threatening the Remainers with a Corbyn government will frighten them, as they will fear that Britain ends up crashing out of the EU with no deal, rather than a less-than-ideal deal that still avoids trading on World Trade Organisation Terms.

However, this is not how those Remainers see things. They genuinely believe the whips would be bluffing and would not dare push the issue as a matter of confidence because No 10 is well aware the party is currently unelectable.

One says: “This is far too premature; we are quite prepared to look for compromises with No 10 on the precise nature of a customs union, but instead we’re getting all this antagonistic stuff already.” Another describes the threats as “a sign of insecurity from a Government that isn’t doing the groundwork of meeting up with us, explaining their position and hearing ours”.

There is considerable frustration that the Tory whips are still running a “macho” operation on Mrs May’s behalf, and this sentiment extends far beyond Tory rebels. One minister complains that a lot of the Brexit infighting, which is making it much harder for Britain to negotiate with Brussels, has actually been aggravated by the “aggressive” whips. That’s not normally what whips are supposed to do.

The pro-EU MPs also suggest that if No 10 makes their customs union call a matter of confidence, then it will need to do the same with another amendment, tabled by the Brexiteer European Research Group, which would stop the government using a legislative “back door” to stay in a long-term customs union arrangement.

Corbyn has managed to put the Government on the ropes, largely by exploiting problems he didn’t create Isabel Hardman

Yet while the Remainers think they have a parliamentary majority for a soft Brexit, the fear in No 10 is that the ERG contains the Tories most likely to finish off Mrs May by sending in letters calling for a leadership contest.

It seems as though the vote will come down to what each group involved can second-guess about the other group’s real thinking; a risky game given how little trust and understanding there is in the Conservative party.

For Mr Corbyn, it seems to be less about principle, given the Labour leader’s own long-held beliefs on the European Union, and more about the reality that his party membership would be much more in favour of at least some kind of customs union arrangement and that backbenchers including Mr Umunna have done so much groundwork with Ms Soubry and other Tories (a number of these Remainers are in Paris today, discussing Brexit with their French counterparts). Most importantly, what sort of Opposition leader would pass up the chance to make the Government fall?

Mr Corbyn has managed to put the Government on the ropes, largely by exploiting problems he didn’t create. He didn’t choose for Jan Sarkocy to make a series of allegations about meetings the pair had during the Cold War, but he did choose to make the most of the ensuing Tory clumsiness on the matter. He didn’t choose to make debates over membership of a customs union so threatening to the Government, but he is jolly well capitalising on that threat now it has materialised.

Given how well Mr Corbyn capitalised on the mess the Tories made of what they thought was a clever manifesto in last year’s election, they should beware of what they now think is a clever strategy to preserve their Prime Minister’s authority. The consequences will be far worse than Mr Bradley’s tweeted apology.