Don't get too excited. Brexit can never end well.

Following the latest dramatic twists in the Brexit saga and the news that David Davis and Boris Johnson had resigned, two groups of people seem particularly jubilant.

The first is that insufferable bunch of Remain supporters which believes that the referendum result in 2016 was simply ‘advisory’ and can be ignored or overturned.

While the folk in this camp are absolutely right in their assessment of the damage that Brexit will do to the UK economically, they completely misread the political mood beyond their own Twitter-fuelled bubble. A constant refrain is that Parliament stop Brexit or that we have a so-called #peoplesvote on the final deal. Now, they feel their moment has come.

The second group consists of paid-up members of the Corbyn fan club (and perhaps some of the Labour Leader’s fellow travellers on the Opposition front bench), who think a general election is now on the cards and that the Brexit debacle can be used as a lever to usher in a socialist government.

Of course, the political atmosphere is febrile during the current summer heatwave and it’s impossible to rule out either a second referendum or a general election. Nevertheless, my hunch is that they are both still fairly unlikely. And, perhaps more importantly, if they were to go ahead, neither would do anything to extricate the UK from the shallow grave it has dug itself.

Let’s look at the pro-EU fanatics first of all.  

One of the most dangerous and patronising arguments employed by the Remoaner contingent is that Brexit is ‘impossible’.

Stupid, yes.

Full of seemingly intractable problems? Certainly.

Likely to result in a messy and destructive economic spiral? Check.

But impossible? President Trump’s visit this week should remind us that nothing is impossible. If every softer version of Brexit is rejected because it is too complicated or too naïve, Brexit will not magically disappear. We’ll be left – by default – with a hard Brexit. Unless, of course, we somehow repeal the EU Withdrawal Bill and revoke Article 50.

And would we really throw up our hands and say that we’d tried our best to do what the public voted for, but it was beyond us?

‘Leaving the EU just isn’t really practical. We’ve looked into it and it just doesn’t work.’

Imagine how that would go down in Thurrock or Great Yarmouth or Stoke-on-Trent. It would confirm that most devastating argument of the pro-Brexit brigade: that the EU is like the notorious Hotel California and that the metropolitan elite on reception will never allow you to leave.

The #peoplesvote campaign believes that when faced with the prospect of the cliff edge, the British people will pull back from the brink. So the strategy is to ridicule every compromise – including that bravely put forward by Theresa May at Chequers last week – until we are collectively staring at disaster. Many supporters of this position disingenuously pretend that they are not actually trying to block Brexit. It doesn’t wash any more.

But would Parliament really vote to overturn the result of the 2016 referendum? I suspect not. Because although the cliff might be looming, no one is inclined to explode a grenade to avoid going over the edge. It took months to agree the legislation for the first referendum. So imagine what a second would involve.

If we felt the question in 2016 was stupid because of its lack of nuance, we’d better get the next one right. But what are we actually going to ask?

We’re going to vote on the ‘deal’, right?

But what if the deal is complex and doesn’t lend itself to yes/no?

What if there isn’t really a deal?

And what if we can’t agree what a ‘no’ vote would mean?

What if some people told us it meant staying in the EU as if nothing had happened. And others told us it meant staying in the EU without all the opt-outs we’d previously enjoyed? And a third camp argued that it meant sending the government back to renegotiate a different kind of Brexit?

This is a quagmire. But it wouldn’t be the only one.

The last referendum is now mired in allegations of sleaze. Overspending, misleading slogans, Russian interference.  We’d surely want the rules and regulations of the next poll to be different, wouldn’t we? And that would be oh-so-easy to agree, wouldn’t it?

And let’s imagine a scenario which is the ultimate nightmare. After an acrimonious and vicious campaign of backbiting and recrimination, we produce another close result. Where would the UK be then, exactly?

Which brings us on to the Corbynistas.

They really seem to believe that they could fight a general election on the basis of the Tory divisions over Brexit, while being just as divided themselves.

Corbyn did well in 2017 because the election actually turned out to be about almost anything but Brexit. It was instead focused on whether May’s ‘strong and stable’ mantra was believable and whether we could trust a party that had slipped the dementia tax into its manifesto on the back of a massive poll lead.

Those who did vote on the Brexit issue were able to persuade themselves that Jez stood for whatever they wanted to believe. Heartland voters inclined towards Leave listened to his pledge to respect the referendum. Metropolitan liberals felt that he must surely take a softer stance on the EU than May.

None of this will apply in any election held in 2018. This Brexit election really will mean Brexit election. And Jez will have to nail his colours to the mast. But he presides over a party that includes old-style anti-Europeans (his hard-left allies), Lexit mavericks (Frank Field, Kate Hoey etc), soft Brexit pragmatists and full-on Remoaners, such as Mike Gapes, David Lammy and Chuka Umunna.

Would Labour’s pitch to the electorate be any clearer than that presented by the hopelessly divided Tory Party?

If current opinion polls are to be believed (and, yes, we all know the dangers with opinion polls), the general election would quite likely return another hung parliament. And if the party leaders had any sense, they’d be falling over themselves not to accept an invite to Buckingham Palace.