I asked Theresa May if she sides with Putin or the people – an answer would tell us who Brexit is really for

The Russian leader's aims are clear. He wants a weak and divided EU, and the chance to bring the Eastern bloc back into the lair of the bear

For all the farcical invoking of Blitz spirit, Brexit isn’t merely an absurdist experiment in English nationalist nostalgia – it is the most audacious example yet of a futuristic Russian nationalism that seeks to divide and rule Europe.

If we can be judged by our friends then Brexit has no stauncher ally than Vladimir Putin. After all, Donald Trump has proved unreliable.

But Putin? It is hard to think of anyone who has done more for the cause (and that is not to take anything away from the years of Brexit monologues by Tory MP Bill Cash).

Russian bot farms have been exposed as having supported the Leave campaign. This comes on top of allegations of iffy Russian money funding Brexit campaigns, and Arron Banks’ almost comical inability to explain his donations to Leave. Comical, that is, if his scarcely thought through Brexit wasn’t driving Britain to what Hilary Clinton has called the single biggest act of deliberate self-harm a nation has ever committed.

As if Russian interference in the original referendum was not shocking enough, it is still going on.

The Channel 4 drama Brexit: The Uncivil War might have relegated Russian involvement to the briefest postscript, but in reality Putin is still in the trenches fighting for a hard Brexit. At a recent press conference Putin attacked the idea of a referendum on the deal, claiming the original result should be respected.

Oh, the irony! Putin, the arch kleptocrat, giving advice on democracy. “Don’t steal Brexit,” he seemed to demand, while probably stealing (sorry, being gifted) another superyacht. It should have been sufficiently chilling to make even Boris Johnson pause for thought. And all while using the Brexiteer message script of delivering the will of the people.

As any student of Russian history could tell you, “the people” are often invoked by the Kremlin, including when justifying the mass murder of innocent people. But rarely does the Kremlin actually ask “the people” for anything so radical as an opinion. For Putin, “the people” are to be manipulated and even killed for his own ends.

And Putin’s ends are clear. He wants a weak and divided EU. Ultimately, he seeks to break it up, with the Eastern bloc – brought into the European fold by Margaret Thatcher’s single market – dragged back into the lair of the Russian bear.

In any other context, the howls of protest about Russian interference would be deafening. But where is the patriotic outrage of Brexiteers? Instead they make ever more preposterous Nazi slurs against the EU, as if Jean-Claude Juncker were an aspiring Adolf Hitler – all the while ignoring the totalitarian autocrat looking to take back control of huge swathes of Europe.

And what of Theresa May? She is refusing a second referendum. We are told – repeatedly, as if this somehow makes it true – that she possesses a great sense of duty. So when will she admit that it cannot be in the national interest to leave the EU either with her deal or no deal, both of which would leave Britain out of the single market, friendless and weaker than it has ever been? Can a statesperson doing their duty really sacrifice economic and geopolitical strength for a unicorn derby of competing lies, jockeyed by male Brexiteers of such tiny stature?

Michael Gove likens MPs waiting for an alternative deal to 50-something men dreaming of an affair with Scarlett Johansson (a homely analogy to some of his colleagues, perhaps). But there is already a far more attractive alternative on offer: a peoples’ vote.

It is why I asked May at prime minister’s questions whether she is on the side of the people or Putin. The Independent, like the Liberal Democrats, have campaigned for a vote for a long time now. And we are winning the argument. But we need May to face reality.

The finer details of democracy might not detain Putin, but poll after poll show voters want a say on this fatally flawed final deal. May has probably ended up here unwittingly, due to her famous inflexibility. But she now finds herself on the side of Putin, not the people. For the irony is as marked with May now as it is with her unlikely Russian ally: invoking the will of the people to deny the will of the people.

It is both joke and tragedy, one that would have driven Kafka and Kundera to tears – but when Putin is scheming with his old comrades in the KGB, you can be sure it drives him to howls of evil laughter.

Layla Moran is a Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon