When I interviewed the Conservative MP Nicky Morgan last March, I described her teasingly as a Remain tugboat to Anna Soubry’s galleon under full sail. But perhaps things have moved on since then. The atmosphere around Brexit having grown ever more febrile and nasty, Soubry herself has a different analogy. “We’ve become good friends,” she says of her fellow Tory rebel. “We’re [like] Thelma and Louise’s mothers.” There follows a brief but uncharacteristic pause. And then: “I’m Louise’s mother, obviously.” Should you need a reminder, in Ridley Scott’s film, Thelma Dickinson and Louise Sawyer are best friends who escape their dreary Arkansas lives by embarking on a road trip, during which the older of the two, Louise (played by Susan Sarandon), shoots dead a man who tries to rape her pal. After this, they go on the run; a pair of doomed outlaws for whom most, if not all, of the audience roots right until the movie’s very end.

When Soubry and I meet, it’s almost a week since the Daily Telegraph used its front page to dub Tory critics of the EU withdrawal bill “mutineers” (the 15 Conservatives in question, all of whom were pictured beneath the headline, had indicated they would be voting against the government’s efforts to fix the date of Brexit for 29 March 2019); the previous day, as she talked on Radio 4 about the death threats she had received as a consequence, she sounded to me like her usual self, which is to say only mildly cross. In person, though, it’s clear that her equilibrium is not yet quite restored. “I was wobbled,” she says, hands wrapped tightly around a paper cup. “I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t. When Sean [her parliamentary assistant] first collated them, I thought, blimey, that’s bad. But it was only on Friday, back in my constituency, that I began to feel uneasy. In the constituency, you often tell people where you are, what church bazaar you’re looking forward to opening. As a Conservative, I’ve had abuse for a very long time. The difference with this is that there is a direct causal link between the way the Telegraph described us and the threats, abuse and Facebook postings that followed.”

It is one unholy mess, this country's politics Anna Soubry

What concerns her now is the deafening silence emanating from her own side on this matter. “The party has got to call this out. But yet again, I feel it will be weak. They will not take the sort of robust action they need to. My whip said, ‘Sorry to hear about this’, but there’ll be no further interest because at least one of them [those attacking her] is a Conservative himself: Tom Borwick [leading light of Vote Leave, the son of the former Conservative MP for Kensington Victoria Borwick, and one of those encouraging people on social media to tell their MPs face to face what they make of their so-called attempts to thwart Brexit]. He hasn’t issued death threats, but by calling us anti-democratic, he is stoking and fuelling the fire. There’s something about these hard Brexiters: it’s fascinating, actually. Look at the language some of them use. It’s not enough that you accept the result [of the referendum]; it’s not enough that you voted to trigger article 50. Now it’s, ‘Yeah, yeah, but do you believe?’ It’s like the counter-revolutionary forces of Chairman Mao or Joe Stalin. It’s not enough that you went against everything you ever believed in; you have to sign up in blood. It’s like Orwell’s thought police and the reign of terror combined.”

Who, she asks, are the mutineers of which the Daily Telegraph speaks? “Sir Oliver Heald QC, former solicitor general and bastion of the Conservative establishment? Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general? I mean, come on! Ken [Clarke] made an important point, which is that having supported Conservative policy on European policy for 15 years, he now finds himself a rebel. I am the epitome of someone who is not a professional politician, who came into this after two previous careers [before her election to represent Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire in 2010, Soubry, 60, was a journalist and a barrister] with no ambition other than to represent my constituency. I was very happy to support David Cameron loyally. I was behind his attempts to make us electable and, indeed, I was elected as a result of the changes he brought about. I agreed with everything that was being done and then this… disaster took place.” She runs her hands through her hair. “It is one unholy mess, this country’s politics.”

Quick guide What is the EU withdrawal bill? Show Hide What is the EU withdrawal bill? The EU Withdrawal Bill – once known as the Great Repeal Bill – is going through the House of Commons to repeal the 1972 European Communities Act and transpose all existing EU legislation into domestic UK law, which will avoid a 'cliff-edge' change on the day after we leave the EU. Parts of the bill have been highly controversial, and MPs have tabled hundreds of amendments to try and change its wording, including a significant number of Conservative rebels. Some of the key controversies include its use of so-called Henry VIII powers, which will give government ministers the power to tweak the wording of laws to make sure they make sense in UK legislation - but those changes could take place without having to go through parliament. MPs have called this a "power grab" by the government. The government estimates around 800 to 1,000 measures called statutory instruments will be required to make sure the bill is applied correctly. Other concerns include the government's decision not to include the EU charter of fundamental rights in the law being transposed. Other amendments are attempts to affect the Brexit process, including legislating for a transitional period and giving MPs a binding meaningful vote on the deal secured by Theresa May, before the deal is finalised.

Theresa May’s government is, she believes, in thrall to just 35 hard Brexiters, a situation she regards as preposterous given that the majority in the chamber now agree the only thing that matters is getting the best deal for Britain. “The government was,” she says, “foolish to make this some sort of test of people’s Brexit credentials by going back on what they had said and suddenly deciding to put the date of our withdrawal on the front of the withdrawal bill, a decision that, as any lawyer will tell you, is just plain stupid [because it allows for no flexibility in negotiations]. Our concerns about this are technical, not political, which is why, for it to be stoked up in such a manner, you wonder what on earth is really going on. Why are these Brexiters behaving like this?” What’s the answer to this question? “They are really, really worried about not getting their hard Brexit and so they have made it a test of their strength and of Theresa May’s strength, too.”

The wing of the party that found succour under Thatcher (when, as a one-nation Tory, Soubry left the Conservatives) and which went on to destroy John Major is now in the driving seat: “And if it doesn’t stop, if the prime minister doesn’t do what she’s perfectly capable of doing, which is to try and unite people as opposed to fuel further division, our party is going to be destroyed.”

Will the government cave in as far as putting the date on the bill goes? (Although it has not yet lost a vote on the withdrawal bill, this could be one point on which it is vulnerable.) “It would be very good if it did,” she says, quietly. However, in truth, she has no idea what the government will do next, just as she has no idea if, or when, it will lose a vote during the eight days devoted to the bill’s committee stage. “We don’t know what amendments will be selected for votes and we don’t know how Labour will vote either. I mean, there’s Dennis Skinner and that other guy [John Mann], who are hardline Brexiters. And Jeremy Corbyn is a proper Brexiter, an old-school Bennite who sees the EU as a capitalist conspiracy; he won’t deliver anything other than Brexit, believe me.” How worried are the whips? She shoots me an exasperated look. “They’re going to have a real problem on amendment 7 [proposed by Dominic Grieve, this would give MPs the final say on any deal with the EU]. But this idea that losing a vote will bring down the government! It’s absolute baloney. That’s just another falsehood that has been put around and I can’t tell you how furious it makes me.”

We’re sitting in the anteroom to Soubry’s Commons office, mere inches from the desks of her two aides, Sean and Emily. “Sean,” she says (Soubry, who is from Worksop originally, sounds much more Notts in person than she does on the radio), “have you got that email? The one that came from a Croydon council address?” Sean duly locates the email and, soon afterwards, so does she, on her mobile phone. “I’m going to read it out because you’ll enjoy it. It says, ‘I simply cannot understand why you wish to destroy the elected government from within with regards to your personal Brexit agenda.’” She looks up again. “Someone is stirring this, aren’t they? Of course I don’t want to bring down the government – and voting against a mere amendment will not bring down the fucking government. I find this bizarre. There are people in the government who have tabled amendments. The whole party has taken leave of its senses.”

Play Video 1:32 'No ifs, no buts': Dominic Grieve vows to vote against Brexit bill amendment – video

All the same, does she believe Theresa May can lead the Conservatives into the next election? “I don’t know.” What about the Brexit secretary, David Davis? Reports last weekend suggested that he was close to resigning, following the “secret” letter Boris Johnson and Michael Gove sent to Theresa May (among other things, they worried that certain areas of government were not adequately prepared for a “no-deal” situation). “That would not surprise me in the slightest. I should think he feels undermined. He’s trying to deliver the impossible and he sees others on manoeuvres and that is not acceptable.” What about the divorce bill? When, and by how much, will the UK’s offer be improved? She can’t answer this either. “Though we are going to have to sort this out. Because we must make progress on these talks.”

She sniffs. “Another thing people seem not to have appreciated is that the government does not even have a policy on the transition arrangement. The other weekend, I felt clearly that David [Davis] had said that during the transition we would come out of the European court of human justice. But by Thursday, he was saying: we will be in it, but as the period goes along we will transition out of it as we transition. How the hell is the EU meant to conduct any form of discussion with us in these circumstances?”

She believes the issue of the Irish border should have been debated before article 50 was even triggered. It amazes her, too, that there has never been a real debate in parliament about either the single market or the customs union. “So here we are, nine months from triggering article 50, and 17 from the referendum, and we still do not know what we even want by way of a transition. No deal becomes more and more of a profound reality. And the electorate was told a deal would be easy, that it would take about a day and a half!” Her voice is thunderous now. “My God. History will condemn this period. It will condemn those who’ve sat back and kept their view to themselves, who haven’t stood up and tried to stop all this nonsense.”

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On and on she goes: there are so many things to rage over – although her bellicosity is, like Ken Clarke’s, rarely anything less than winning – and perhaps it makes her feel a little better to have me listening to her for a while, my attention undivided. Finally, though, I do change the subject, wondering if all this has already kicked the issue of sexual harassment, and the lack of adequate procedures to deal with it in Westminster, into the long grass. “I completely agree that it does feel almost like it didn’t happen,” she says, of the series of events that began with the resignation of the defence secretary, Michael Fallon. “But, no. There is a group of people, among them the magnificent Jess Phillips, who will not let that happen. We are very worried. I am worried in particular that the Labour party want to keep everything within the party. This is beyond party. This is about workers and everyone having the same rights as workers in any other place. We need the right sanctions and everyone needs to sign up to it.”

As she says this, it strikes me suddenly that in different circumstances – by which I mean, I suppose, had Labour not moved so far to the left – it wouldn’t be too difficult to picture Soubry crossing the floor of the House of Commons. As things stand, however, she is stuck: her talent and her ambition have nowhere to go. All she can do is deploy her considerable determination and, to go back to where we began, to take heart from the fact that many people will be rooting for her right until, Brexit-wise, the final credits roll. “We are leaving the EU,” she says. “I accept that. But I made a decision I was never again going to vote against my conscience and that stands. I am simply not prepared to stand back and watch my country fall off a cliff edge. If that means voting against my party, so be it.”