Theresa May’s Brexit deal has achieved the impossible – greasy pole climber Michael Fallon has broken ranks

When this particular worm turns, no wonder it’s hailed as the most savage blow yet to the prime minister's survival fantasies

It may be no more than an urban myth, but astute political scholars are convinced that Michael Fallon’s surname is a contraction.

Early in his career, the theory goes, he decided that the 20-barrelled surname he inherited would hurt him if he was ever in position to run for the Conservative leadership.

You can understand why. Michael Calls-On-Him-To-Grow-A-Pair-And-Stop-Being-Such-A-Wretched-Little-Sycophant-Always-Fall-On-Deaf-Ears would undermine the man of the people credentials posh Tories fake when running for the top job.

In 1990, for example, Douglas Hurd insisted that, while it may have been technically correct that he attended Eton College, it was, in fact, only as an impoverished lad on a scholarship. Which pretty much made him Stanley Holloway’s dustman in My Fair Lady. For similar reasons, our hero is believed to have ditched 18 of those names, and removed the hyphen between the surviving two, to rebrand himself as plain old (Michael Cathel) Fallon.

The sadness, with hindsight, is that nominative determinism proved far too powerful a tractor beam on his future to be broken by deed poll. Even at Westminster, a festering pond infested by parasitic organisms that slide up the penis of power and settle in the host’s colon in the quest for promotion, he became the Crawler Supreme.

His status as greasers’ greaser, sonorously defending his host’s every scandal and fiasco when no one else would or could, saw him slither into the Cabinet with the defence portfolio for which he was so uncannily suited.

After a little light groping restored him to the backbenches, he was as unflinching supporter of Theresa May as he had been of David Cameron, and will be of anyone who might hire him in the future. To Mickey, the ritual idiotic blathering of fealty is more than a career choice. It qualifies, borrowing from the prime minister herself, as every fibre of his being.

So when this particular worm turns, no wonder it’s hailed as the most savage blow yet to May’s survival fantasies.

Donald Trump’s casual remark that her Brexit deal would stop the US from trading with the UK isn’t helpful either. But Trump – in case you’ve missed this – has a habit of saying crazy stuff, especially when encouraged to do so by Boris Johnson or whichever no dealer (probably not Nigel Farage; you doubt the Prez takes his calls these days) distilled those 585 pages into a one line soundbite.

And Trump, if this has also passed you by, is not defined by fierce loyalty to natural allies; Fallon, as I may have implied, is known for nothing else (other than the indelicacies that got him fired).

If a midnight TV bulletin showed footage of a senior Tory forcing a Marlboro Light into the mouth of a beagle – not in deranged homage to outmoded medical research, but unmistakably for post-coital relaxation – he’d be on Today at 6.11am the next morning telling Humpo the long-eared hound was a shape-shifting alien who demanded a smoke after appearing as Helen of Troy. And that even then, this blameless minister, who on no account should resign, resisted until she force fed him an entire steak and rohypnol pudding.

Leading chronologists based in Zurich once identified the shortest measurable distance of time as the interval between hearing the words, “And now on Radio 4, here’s Libby Purves with Midweek” and instinctively reaching for the off switch. Those same quantum scientists also posited that its diametric opposite – a period fractionally longer than infinity – is the wait for Michael to disagree publicly with a Conservative leader.

They’ll be feeling daft after yesterday, when Fallon gravely told Mr Speaker that May’s Brexit deal (I paraphrase for brevity) was too steaming and capacious a pile of s**t for even him to hold his nose and vote. Interviewed later, he couldn’t quite bring himself to say she should go. But nor could he say that she shouldn’t, and by his standards that qualified as a scimitar strike to her already rupturing aorta.

You might analyse this as yet another panel, albeit more cryptic than most, on the ancient Fallow tapestry; that sensing the imminence of the present leader’s demise, he was ingratiating himself with whoever the next might be in pursuit of a cabinet recall.

But this is not a moment for the cynics and sneerers. This is a moment to revel in the most sensational confirmation yet (forget Leicester City) that truly we live in the age of miracles.

It is also the moment to rejoice that Theresa May has her consolation. She might have conflated delusional intransigence with Churchillian doughtiness. She might be a rival to David Cameron himself in the reckless self-indulgence, with which she has promoted her party’s short term interests over her country’s future. But all prime ministers leave office with something juicy and indelible on the credit side of the ledger. Tony Blair has his Good Friday Agreement; Gordon Brown has his salvation of the global economy; John Major has his brilliantly negotiated opt-outs from the Maastricht Trea... yup, I see that now. Ah, well. Every rule must have its proving exception.

Now Theresa has her own galactic achievement. It took her more than two years.

But if it had taken two light years, or 200, it would be worth every nanosecond and more for the honour of going down in history as the Tory who did the impossible and found the way to make Michael Fallon grow a pair at last.