To say that opinions remain divided on Brexit is something of an understatement. But the problem isn’t just that there are disagreements. There are also many different kinds of disagreement – which makes it all too possible for people to get confused about one another’s motives. Those of us who will be voting this week in favour of Yvette Cooper’s bill to extend the article 50 deadline are subject to this kind of misunderstanding.

There are, of course, MPs who will vote on Wednesday and Thursday for Yvette’s bill who hope to achieve a long delay and a second referendum. But that is by no means the universal view of those who are supporting it. Many of us strenuously disagree with the idea of a second referendum and want an extension of the article 50 process for just long enough to enable parliament to reach a consensus on a Brexit deal.

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What joins us all together is the realisation that, if we don’t act now, the UK will sleepwalk out of the EU in just over 30 days with no deal whatsoever. In meetings organised by Conservative former cabinet minister, Dame Caroline Spelman, and Labour frontbencher and trade unionist, Jack Dromey, MPs have been told by businesses, large and small, and trades unions representing every sector about the impact of a no-deal exit on investment, jobs and wages. We are not willing to play Russian roulette with our constituents’ livelihoods.

Many of us on the Conservative benches have already voted for the prime minister’s deal once. We are more than prepared to do so again next week and in coming weeks. But we have watched with increasing dismay as the government has shuffled, bit by bit, towards a cliff edge.

In a succession of parliamentary votes, we have seen that dozens of our colleagues from the European Research Group are not willing to support the prime minister’s deal except on terms that the EU is unlikely to accept. If this goes on for just four more weeks, we will leave without a deal.

The prime minister keeps on telling us that the only way to stop a no-deal Brexit is to vote for her deal. But it is now clear many members of the ERG would actually prefer us to leave the EU without a deal, so any attempt to rely on them to carry her deal through is doomed to fail.

So there is only one path open to those of us who seek to find some form of reasonable and orderly Brexit. We need to initiate a cross-party process to find a sensible Brexit compromise that a majority of MPs from political parties across the House of Commons would be willing to support and see through. In order to do that, we first need to secure the parliamentary time and space required to make it happen.

This week parliament will have, for the last time, a chance to set this process in train. The prospect of falling by mistake into a no-deal Brexit, simply because we have failed to create an opportunity for cross-party consensus to emerge, would be a tragic and historic mistake.

Of course we know that our intentions may be misconstrued and our motives maligned. But we are determined to do what we can to avert disaster, rather than sit on our hands and watch a tragedy unfold as if we had no responsibility for it.