As Jacob Rees-Mogg recently found out, and I discovered in 2003 when I resigned as one of Iain Duncan Smith's shadow ministers, leading a public rebellion is deeply uncomfortable. It is unlikely to do your immediate prospects any good either.

So it was with very mixed feelings that I let it be known that I have joined Jacob and a number of other colleagues in writing to Sir Graham Brady to ask for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May.

MPs' letters can remain entirely private as our rules, uniquely in the world, place total trust in one person, the Chairman of the 1922 Committee. This is so that anybody from the most senior minister to the newest MP can request a ballot without the angst of making a public declaration.

It also means nobody is quite sure how many of the 48 letters (representing 15 per cent of Conservative MPs) which are required to trigger a vote have been sent.

But today, just as back then, I am convinced of the need to waive my right to privacy and take a public stand in order to encourage my colleagues to join us. Much of politics is about creating alliances and delivering majority positions. Individual decisions rarely succeed until they have inspired enough to follow.

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No one questions Theresa May’s public service, her duty or her astonishing capacity for hard work. One of the keys to her longevity in a series of senior posts, not least as the longest serving home secretary in modern times, is her risk management.

She advances with great caution and deliberation and has a notorious command of detail. She is not one of nature’s delegators.

In some circumstances this can be a great strength, but in others it is a terrible weakness. This we have seen in the unhappy relationship between her and successive Brexit secretaries as strategies were pursued in parallel by the Cabinet Office and the Department for Exiting the European Union.

The initial clarity of her campaign on Brexit, summed up by her Lancaster House speech, has collapsed. Her style of leadership, determination to deliver a deal, and reliance on senior civil servants, has seen the UK comprehensively outmanoeuvred by the EU Commission’s negotiators almost from the start.

Two weeks before Article 50 was triggered, the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, of which I was then chairman, produced a report on the implications of ending the notice period with no agreement. We were unanimously clear, Remainers and Brexiteers together, that no agreement was entirely possible and planning had to get under way. We even said that “such preparation would strengthen the Government’s negotiating hand by providing credibility to its position that it would be prepared to walk away from a bad deal".

Had we had the chance to vote, Parliament would have decided that Mrs May's effort was a bad deal by a majority of about 250. I would have agreed with a majority of my colleagues that no deal is infinitely better than that bad deal.

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Ironically, given the largely unchallenged statements by Remainers about the consequences of “crashing out”, it is the default to World Trade Organisation terms that gives businesses certainty surrounding future terms of trade.

The proposed withdrawal agreement presents immediate uncertainty regarding if and when the UK could conclude a Free Trade Agreement with anyone - after all, why would any nation commit its trade negotiators to engage with the UK until its long term position was clear? Meanwhile, in many key areas, the details of Britain and the EU's long term relationship is still yet to be decided.

The country needs a leader who can articulate a positive vision of the opportunities available to Global Britain immediately after March 29. A leader who can manage the move to WTO terms, trade with confidence and be prepared to resolve any differences by using the interests of our EU neighbours' exporters as leverage.

The British Prime Minister needs to lead us confidently to the optimistic new future the people chose on June 23, 2016. If we allow that decision to be stolen on the basis of unfounded and exaggerated anxieties over potential short-term difficulties created by the move to WTO terms, British politics will take a generation to recover.

Theresa May has at times found this clarity, but too infrequently in my view. We now need confidence, optimism and vision to meet the challenges of 2019 and embrace the opportunities that lie beyond.

A country managing its relative decline entered the EEC in 1973. It is a very different country that now seeks the freedom to enjoy our global competitive advantage across the world.