Will the Remain cause perish on 23rd May?

We all grew up with the adage that we must careful what we wish for. Before we know it, we’ll find it’s actually happening.

And here we are with the European Elections on 23^rd May.

Secretly – and latterly not-so-secretly – Remainers longed for the idea of deferring the Brexit withdrawal date. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, they imagined, if May were unable to force us to quit the EU at the end of March and we would continue as full members of the club? Just think of the egg on the Prime Minister’s face as she was forced to concede that elections to the European Parliament would have to go ahead after all.

Well, May will have egg on her face after 23^rd May. But so will everyone else, apart from Nigel Farage.

Numerically, the anti-Brexit voters in the population are pretty strong, but who are they supposed to back? The revived ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ Liberal Democrats, perhaps? The newly-formed Change UK? Maybe they think the Greens are a good option? Or does nationalist loyalty tilt them towards the SNP or Plaid Cymru?

It will be a mixed and patchy picture, in which collectively these well-meaning Europeans do quite well. But polls suggest that the newly-formed Brexit Party is likely to come out on top – perhaps by a significant margin. In one test of opinion, it seems as if the Faragists might even amass more votes than Labour and the Tories put together.

If this does happen, it will be a disaster for the pro-European cause. The narrative will be that a sizeable body of opinion in the country accepts Farage’s case for ‘betrayal’.

The Tories currently look as if they’re on the brink of annihilation. This may well be the tipping point for Theresa May’s doomed premiership and the message among the Tory faithful will be crystal clear: we can only survive as a party if we push Brexit through.

The European elections may therefore greatly increase the chance of a strongly pro-Brexit leader taking over the Tory Party and moving in to 10 Downing Street. No deal will be back on the table – if not as a desired outcome, at least as a bargaining chip.

For Corbyn, the election will be no less problematic. In the 2017 general election, he performed a conjuring trick, whereby he convinced both Leavers and Remainers he was on their side. This garnered him 40% of the vote. Now, he has managed to persuade both Leavers and Remainers that he doesn’t have a clue what he’s up to. 20% in the European elections seems plausible.

My guess is that he will use the vote for Farage to vindicate his Eurosceptic stance and double down on his desire to push some kind of Brexit through. This may potentially cause a further rupture in Labour ranks, as more moderates recognise the sheer futility of their ‘stay-and-fight’ strategy.

And there’s another thing to bear in mind. The European elections – surprise, surprise – are not confined to the UK. What if the overall picture on the continent is one of significant gains for anti-European and neo-right populists? The prognosis in Italy and Hungary looks bleak and both France and Germany teeter on the brink of something ugly too.

Remainers in the UK will be advocating another referendum to stay in a bloc which looks set to tear itself apart through its own internal tensions. It’s quite conceivable that a third of the MEPs in any new European Parliament would be people broadly aligned with the far right.

And the message from Farage?

You’re not alone in opposing the EU. Brexit is part of a wider movement and the UK is at the vanguard of radical change.

There was one thing that could have prevented this nightmare scenario.

The political parties at Westminster could have been grown-up enough to have passed May’s withdrawal agreement in recent months.

Brexit would have been delivered notionally, taking the wind out of the sails of the far right. The accusations of betrayal would have been more muted and less plausible. At the same time, we would have retained a close economic relationship with our European partners.

Now, who knows? The whip hand will be back with the Brexiters. And the consequences may be felt for generations.