Michel Barnier has overplayed his hand on Brexit. By promoting the option of a ‘Canada’ trade deal so pointedly - both in his interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine and in talks with British MPs - he has given the idea a new legitimacy in Westminster. ‘Canada Plus’ is springing back to life.

And by trashing the Chequers plan petulantly as “insane, illegal, and fraudulent’, he has thrown Theresa May to the wolves and unleashed forces that the EU may struggle to control.

David Davis will champion a 140-page “Alternative Brexit Plan” at the Conservative Party Conference this month, drafted by the Institute for Economic Affairs and City lawyers. It builds on the original work of DexEU - before the Prime Minister snatched the dossier and abandoned her Lancaster House pledges.

This will be the first clamor pugnam for a sovereign ‘Canada’ settlement, attracting support beyond Jacob Rees-Mogg’s 70-strong vanguard and perhaps reaching into the centre of the Parliamentary party.

Chequers Tories have been utterly dispirited by the Barnier demarche. Tory and Labour Remainers are stunned.

This was not the intention of Mr Barnier. His purpose was to pressure the Government into whittling down Chequers: either accept the Customs Union, swallow EU law across the gamut of services and goods, and give way on free movement; or accept the thin gruel of a limited goods deal - one that should lock in the EU’s £90bn trade surplus, without reciprocation on services, where the EU has a deficit. Such is the Commission’s self-serving theology.