What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

I’ve covered a dozen General Elections, which was fine by me when they were only every four or five years.

Now polls are like buses. There’ll be another along in a moment - one in 2015, the EU referendum the following year, and Theresa May’s desperate ballot last June.

So take it from an old hand that the way the PM is trying to sell her Brexit deal across the country feels very much like an election campaign.

In 10 days she will lose the Commons meaningful vote. She knows it, yet to keep galloping towards the guns means she’s either leading the charge of the light-headed brigade or she’s got something up her sleeve.

And if she’s selling her deal to ordinary voters rather than spending that time picking off individual MPs who actually have a vote then there might be polling stations up there.

(Image: AFP/Getty Images)

A dozen stale, mostly male, and all pale Brexiteers including Iain Duncan Smith and Boris Johnson seem to have also clocked this.

So on Tuesday they put their names forward for the Conservative Party’s Parliamentary Assessment Board.

I know, sounds a bit dull for Boris. But it’s a key power base. This is the body which chooses candidates to become MPs.

(Image: Getty Images)

And if IDS and Boris are suddenly involved because Mrs May is drowning, you can bet your lifejacket they’re plotting to mould the next intake of Tory MPs in their own Brexiteer image.

That the PM is thinking of ignoring the will of Parliament and appealing to us to back her deal in a General Election appals MPs.

Many Tories vowed they would never let her lead them into another election after last year’s disaster. Plans were already in place for a leadership contest should she threaten one.

Now they fear she will put a General Election motion before the Commons if she loses the meaningful vote.

She is calculating that once she gets the backing of two thirds of MPs needed to launch the election bandwagon, it will start rolling before anyone can challenge her.

We are heading for a farce of ‘The Thick of It’ proportions. Tory rebels tell me they will not be scared off and will hold a leadership contest in parallel with the election campaign.

(Image: PA)

You can’t do that, I told them. The election would be cancelled. Yes, we can, and no it wouldn’t, they said. Anyway, an election wouldn’t be abandoned if a party leader snuffed it. A temp would stand in.

They even have a slogan which will sound familiar to Mrs May from her Bluffers Guide to Brexit.

No leader is better than a bad leader.

This is the word of the lords

It’s not often the third longest word in the English language is spoken in Parliament. But antidisestablishmentarianism is now official Government policy.

It means being against the Church of England separating from the State. And Government spokesman Lord Young used it when peers debated the issue on Wednesday.

They were told latest figures showed only 14 per cent of us identify as Anglicans, and half the population has no religion.

Bishop of Worcester John Inge was unsurprisingly opposed to change, as was TV doctor Robert Winston.

(Image: BBC)

I am, too, but more for constitutional and practical reasons than religious ones.

The established church is a keystone of the Monarchy. Pull it out and the Queen might go with it.

Many of England’s 12,600 churches are elderly like their congregations. And if the CofE didn’t maintain ancient buildings taxpayers must instead.

* * *

Linguists among you will want the two words which top this one. So get you’re eating tackle round floccinaucinihilipilification which means estimating something as worthless.

And the dictionary’s biggest mouthful, the lung disease pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

Mogg's nice but dims are dumb and gloomy

Brexit countdown Brexit in 0 Days 0 Hours 0 minutes 0 Seconds

Jacob Rees-Mogg’s band of Brexiteers in his European Research group are nice but dim.

So dumb they hadn’t noticed their Whats App group had been infiltrated by an assortment of Remainers and Tory ministers.

The ERG twigged on Tuesday and weeded them out. Only took them 18 months to catch on.

The ERG now gloomily reckons that if there isn’t a General Election we’re heading for a postponement of Article 50.

(Image: Getty Images)

They shouldn’t be surprised. Like them I never believed leaving the EU would be a catastrophe.

Unlike them I also thought the deal we have inside it is better than any Brexit that could be conjured up.

So whatever agreement Theresa May got tucked into her designer dress by Brussels was only ever going to be an exercise in damage limitation.

If MPs vote it down on 11th December we’ll have nothing. Which means no Brexit on 29th March.

Lost in Brexit

(Image: Getty)

No escape from Brexit in Westminster nowadays. I was in a Commons cafe when Brexiteer Tory MP Nigel Evans shouted across: “It’s all going to plan - Michel Barnier’s plan.”

We don't want chips with everything

The TUC is worried British firms might follow US ones in microchipping staff.

Business minister Kelly Tolhurst says that’s most probably illegal under health and safety and data protection laws.

Phew. Microchips are for cats. If bosses got away with this, next thing you know they’d have us all neutered.

Be fare to taxi drivers, Lucy

(Image: BBC)

Labour’s Laura Smith bowled an apparently easy question to Justice minister Lucy Frazer.

Laura asked for the number of taxi passengers convicted of doing runners without paying fares.

Lucy confessed: “There’s no specific offence for taxi fare avoidance.”

You can be done under the Fraud Act or the Theft Act, but not a Hackney Carriage (Pay-up, Guv) Act.

If I was you, Lucy, I’d travel by bus from now on.