My fellow Remainers are turning Brexit into a game of chicken. And Britain will be the loser.

Compromise, wrote Edmund Burke, is not only the foundation of all government but also every human benefit, enjoyment and virtue. But what did he know about politics – this is Brexit Britain and only total victory, it seems, will do. True, a few hardy souls in the Conservative leadership scramble are attempting to keep Edmund’s flame alive by advancing a negotiated Brexit settlement. But with Brussels now setting its face against further negotiations or extensions, the stage looks set for an almighty game of Tory brinkmanship in the autumn. Indeed, extraordinarily the most important question in Westminster right now is not the identity of this country’s next Prime Minister. It is whether vociferously anti no-deal Tories such as the Chancellor Philip Hammond are really prepared to crash a ‘clean Brexit’ government at the almost certain cost of their own political careers. If Hammond and his ilk blink, no deal it will be. If not, then the Conservative Party will surely split irrevocably, and Britain will have its first revolutionary socialist PM.

One would have thought proximity to such a precipice might bring liberal Britain out in cold sweats. Alas, not a bit of it. For you see everything in political Remainia must now be subsumed to the quest for the cherished, Brexit-vanquishing second referendum. Other campaigning goals must be temporarily suspended, every event assessed by its ability to assist the Remainer revolt. So, this logic continues, why not bring on a hard Brexit Prime Minister? After all, will this not accelerate a crisis from which a new plebiscite might emerge?

Such scorched earth tactics have long been the strategic gambit of elite Remainers: the real enemies are those who might yet strike a deal. That this, almost by definition, also increases the political strength of no deal is fully priced in and it is beginning to look like they will get their roulette referendum. It is hard to see a Burkean winning the Tory candidacy and equally hard to see Parliament acquiescing to no deal. At this point, with the polls surely warning the Government away from a general election, a referendum emerges as the ‘compromise’ option. You could call it the non-compromisers’ compromise. No deal versus Remain. Double or quits.

Make no mistake: in liberal Remain-land this moment will be celebrated deliriously. Well, not by this remainer. Indeed, I increasingly feel like a stranger in my own tribe for the simple fact I cannot understand what would be so calamitous about leaving the EU with a deal. Yes, Brexit could mean an awful lot of bad things for Britain, but the crucial word in that sentence is could. Because nearly everything about Brexit, even very big questions it raises such as the future status of migrants, can be settled and then unsettled by the usual back and forth of future Westminster elections. The only exception to this is trade – Brexit, by definition, must make our access to European markets poorer. This is bad, certainly, but worth the poisonous division that might follow a remain victory? Worth playing chicken with the genuine economic damage a no deal Brexit might unleash? No, for me prosecuting a culture war over a trading relationship will never be anything other than absurd. Moreover, it is precisely this peculiar monomania that my political family used to deride in committed Eurosceptics.

It is not too late to avert this catastrophe. The numbers may be there in Parliament for the deal if Remainers (on the Labour side especially) broke for compromise. But sadly, rather than the Burkeans we need, Brexit has made Bill Cash’s out of us all.