Theresa May’s Brexit betrayal this week was just the tip of the iceberg. For people like me who have been confident of the UK leaving the European Union (EU), it is the first time we have felt genuine trepidation that the whole thing won’t happen at all.

If this is the first time, how do I know it’s just the start of a wider attempt to stop Brexit? It’s pretty easy to identify this chicanery because the Prime Minister played so many bad hands this week.

Look at the way she treated President Trump at the United Nations.

Instead of using her speech to promote Britain in the world, she used it to attack President Trump on immigration and refugees, as well as harping on about climate change deals and a long-deceased Pakistani prime minister. Not a single mention of the word “Brexit”.

This revealed to me what she truly hopes will happen. I spoke with diplomats, professors, and Conservative Party operatives in the wake of it. Some agreed, while others didn’t want to agree (but did in the end) that Mrs. May will use the United States and President Trump as a cudgel by which to break Brexit.

It’s the easiest route for her. Find someone reviled on the European stage (as Trump is) and blame them. I said to one friend of mine: “She’s going insult Trump to the point where the U.S. won’t want to do a deal with Britain, then she’ll blame Trump for being mercurial and say we need to water down, or abandon Brexit because Britain needs economic security”.

Just a few days later, in Florence, she begun that process.

Instead of standing by the British government’s promises during the referendum campaign — that Britain would implement Article 50 and leave the European Union if Britons rejected membership — she is now attempting to kick the can down the road, claiming no one is ready for such a commitment (or lack thereof it).

Read what she said:

…the fact is that, at that point, neither the UK – nor the EU and its Members States – will be in a position to implement smoothly many of the detailed arrangements that will underpin this new relationship we seek. Neither is the European Union legally able to conclude an agreement with the UK as an external partner while it is itself still part of the European Union. And such an agreement on the future partnership will require the appropriate legal ratification, which would take time. The UK will be, could easily be, in a position to part ways within the original time frame if we had economic and trading partners such as the United States and other Commonwealth nations. But Theresa May is scuppering this by launching into tirades against President Trump’s agenda.

She added:

How long the period is should be determined simply by how long it will take to prepare and implement the new processes and new systems that will underpin that future partnership. … As of today, these considerations point to an implementation period of around two years.

Not only does this add two years onto the Brexit process, it also leaves the door open for that period of time to be elongated — three years more… four years more… why not a decade?

Is this coming from the European Union? Is it coming from the bureaucrats in the British government? These answers are cop outs.

The fact is Theresa May is a globalist, a liberal, and an ardent Remainer. She hinted at it in her Florence speech:

It does not mean we are no longer a proud member of the family of European nations. And it does not mean we are turning our back on Europe; or worse that we do not wish the EU to succeed. The success of the EU is profoundly in our national interest and that of the wider world.

That is manifestly false to anyone with a conservative or nationalist worldview or philosophy.

Those opposed to Britain’s membership of the European Union should be opposed to the idea of the European Union in its current form as a whole. A political union, sucking sovereignty and cash from nation states, redistributing income and wealth, and building a globalist power bloc in accordance with liberal and socialist values.

That she “wishes the EU to succeed” is the giveaway that not only does she endorse global governance and centralization, she also couldn’t give two hoots about the sovereignty of the people of EU member states suffering at the hands of Eurocrats: in Greece, in Italy, in Hungary, in Poland… all across the EU and Eurozone.

The question the Conservative Party must now ask itself is simple: is it a party of globalism, or is a philosophically conservative party?

If the answer is the former — Tory MPs should be ready to face twenty years in electoral wilderness, or even the complete collapse of the party.

If the answer is the latter — they need to remove Theresa May as Prime Minister post-haste.

Raheem Kassam is the editor in chief of Breitbart London