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Leading People’s Vote campaigner Caroline Lucas today delivered the verdict that Theresa May will call a second Brexit referendum once she is "boxed into a corner" over her Withdrawal Agreement.

Green MP Ms Lucas pointed to the Prime Minister's "shameless" history of U-turns, predicting Mrs May will offer a second vote "when it suits her".

It comes ahead of a crucial week which could ultimately see MPs seeking to delay the scheduled Brexit departure date of March 29.

In an interview with the Standard in Westminster, Ms Lucas fired a volley at Mrs May’s administration, saying it will go down as one of the most “incompetent” in history over its handling of Brexit.

“Can you imagine,” she asked, “what other countries think looking in at us? It’s just shameful."

The Brighton Pavilion MP, a leading anti-Brexit voice, said that after Mrs May backtracked last month over the possibility of extending Article 50, a second referendum is more likely.

Though Mrs May has ruled this out repeatedly, Ms Lucas insisted: “She has a remarkable capacity for doing a U-turn in a very short space of time and in an entirely shameless fashion.

“We have seen her do it time and again, the most famous being the general election in 2017. To my naivety, I actually believed her when she looked down the barrel of a TV camera and said ‘on no account will I call a general election – it would be the height of irresponsibility’. A few weeks later she actually did it.

“So I really don’t think, sadly, we can take what Theresa May says with any degree of seriousness. She changes her mind instantly, on a whim and whenever it suits her.”

Ms Lucas said Mrs May could propose something akin to last month’s so-called Kyle-Wilson amendment, which would see her Brexit deal pass through the Commons but then go to a public vote. “The Prime Minister will find herself boxed into a corner and will recognise it’s the only way she’s going to get her deal through.”

She continued: “The vote back in 2016 gave us no indication of what kind of deal people wanted. The binary yes or no turned out to be highly inadequate to the task of really understanding whether people wanted to be in the single market and the customs union.

“So much has changed in the three years since we voted that it’s only right people should have the opportunity to have a say. If they still think it’s the right thing to do, then we leave.”

Former Green leader Ms Lucas, who was first elected as an MP in 2010, admitted she admired Mrs May on a human level for her “sheer dogged determination”.

But she quickly added: “This is a Prime Minister who has been willing to keep the most extraordinary threat [of no-deal] on the negotiating table and say she wouldn’t be afraid of using it and saying we could make a success of it.

“I think that’s the most reckless, complacent thing she could possibly say given what we know the impact of no-deal would have on our economy.”

Asked where People’s Vote campaigners such as herself, Chuka Umunna and Anna Soubry have failed since 2016, Ms Lucas made a thinly-veiled swipe at the new Independent Group of Labour and Conservative defectors.

“Some of the spokespeople for the People’s Vote campaign have not been the best people to persuade a reluctant Labour frontbench,” she said. “There was always a suspicion that some people were using that People’s Vote campaign to be a launchpad for a new political party.”

She did, however, credit the group for “concentrating the minds” of Mrs May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has since emerged with a firmer stance on a second referendum.

Though Ms Lucas calls the EU “the greatest peace project in the world”, she has opened recent speeches by thanking Leave voters for “giving the establishment a kicking”.

She has followed this up with her “Dear Leavers” campaign, which has seen her travel to Leave-voting communities in an attempt to heal divisions.

She said: “Not everyone who voted Leave was voting on European matters. Many of them were voting because they felt like it was the first time they had a vote that might be listened to – expressing their anger about living in communities that have essentially been ignored for decades."

A second "meaningful vote" on Mrs May's deal is scheduled for Tuesday. If this is rejected, MPs will then vote on Wednesday whether to support a no-deal Brexit.

If a no-deal Brexit is rejected, members will get a vote on Thursday on requesting an extension to Article 50 and delaying EU withdrawal.