As the fantasists of left and right clash, Britain is caught in the middle.

Corbyn out-riders Paul Mason and Owen Jones feel their moment has finally come. They yell through microphones of coming resistance and revolution, while eager crowds chant their agreement. Momentum activists discuss the need to block bridges and tweet about the firebombing of Lloyd George’s house over a hundred years ago by Suffragettes.

Labour MPs such as Dawn Butler and Clive Lewis have tweeted their willingness to camp out in the Commons chamber to defy Boris Johnson’s prolonged closure of Parliament during the conference season.

The hard left has suddenly, to the alarm of more moderate pro-EU activists, taken an interest in Brexit for the first time and decided to hijack the demonstrations and protests over the prorogation of Parliament.

These extremists fantasise about general strikes and confrontations on the street, while most people in the UK are just desperately praying for the whole crisis to resolve itself.

Let’s be honest though. There’s no doubt that these fantasists of the left have been given an unexpected boost by the fantasists of the right.

Dominic Cummings, the Machiavellian mastermind behind Boris Johnson’s prorogation strategy, believes in a disruptive revolution of his own. One in which the UK’s established institutions – such as the civil service, the BBC and perhaps the judiciary – are turned upside down in response to their defiance of the ‘will of the people’.

Right-wing extremism breeds left-wing extremism. Conflict begets conflict. The UK is in a more perilous position constitutionally and politically than at any point in my lifetime.

The only remote parallel in modern history is probably to the fevered tensions of the 1984-5 miners’ strike, when Arthur Scargill and his supporters imagined they could bring down Margaret Thatcher’s right-wing government through extra-parliamentary action. Riot police faced off against strikers and ‘scabs’ were targeted for daring to go to work.

As I have said many times before, there is no good outcome to this mess over Brexit.  European Council President Donald Tusk has spoken many wise words during the debacle – reminding us not to ‘waste’ our precious extension period, for example – but perhaps his most salient contribution was to present the choices facing the UK as those of ‘damage limitation’.

I see it exactly like Tusk. We have shot ourselves repeatedly in both feet. The question now is whether we are going to allow ourselves to bleed to death or whether we’re prepared to call for an ambulance. We’ve given up on the possibility that we’ll ever be walking quite as confidently as we did before.

Prior to May’s departure, the least-worst option (Tusk’s damage limitation) was approval of the withdrawal agreement and political declaration. Repeatedly, through an alliance of the hard left, far right, Northern Irish unionists and bloody-minded Remainers, this pathway was blocked off.

Now, the least-worst option is clearly some government of national unity. This leads me to conclude that a no-confidence vote in Johnson is probably needed next week, rather than convoluted attempts to legislate against no deal.

Earlier in the week, Jeremy Corbyn tacitly accepted that he was not in any position to serve as an interim Prime Minister by agreeing with opposition parties to follow the ‘legislative route’. Now, as the Johnson and Cummings game plan becomes more and more obvious, the no-confidence vote is back in play. But the aftermath will be a disastrous mess if Corbyn reasserts himself as the presumed temporary occupant of Number 10.

Tragically, after Boris' prorogation stunt, there is a sense on the hard left that maybe Jezza’s time has come again. The veteran socialist and republican even made an unlikely request for a meeting with The Queen.

The reality is that he has no real support in the Parliamentary Labour Party, let alone the wider Commons. He is also the most unpopular opposition leader since records began among the wider public. As a consequence, he could never serve as a credible leader of the country, even for a fortnight. After all, that fortnight could be the most pivotal and fraught of the 21^st century so far for the UK.

So where does this leave us?

It’s just possible the courts may rule against prorogation, although such a decision would only give lawmakers a handful of extra days to discuss Brexit. It won’t bring them any closer to agreeing on anything beyond the need to block no deal. 

Legislation against that no-deal outcome – if achieved in the Commons – has to go through the Lords, which Boris is threatening to pack with pro-Brexit peers. Such a statute would also allow Johnson to call a general election on his own terms: pronouncing that Parliament has defied the public’s expressed desires in the 2016 referendum.

By a process of elimination, we have to conclude there is now only one route towards partial salvation. That’s to prioritise a vote of no confidence with the idea that a unity figurehead will lead an interim administration. While of course it does matter to a certain extent whether it’s Ken Clarke or Yvette Cooper or Harriet Harman, it’s far more important that we install a government not led by Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn.

A unity government will not magically solve the UK’s problems. Neither will the general election and possible second referendum it might usher in. But damage control and dispassionate reflection dictates that it’s the path we must now follow. Just don’t hold your breath.