The chief whip has turned on himself. The Tories are finished

The man in charge of party discipline has gone on TV to tell Theresa May she has no idea what she's doing. Where can they possibly go from here?

Here we are at this high dramatic peak of Brexit: The Greatest S***show Symphony Of Them All. None of us have heard anything like it. And yet, it really is still possible for a soloist of true, virtuosic sublimity to elevate us yet again to new, ever more breathtaking heights.

Above the soaring strings, suddenly we hear Julian Smith, blowing on his wonder trumpet and down in the stalls, we can hardly believe our eyes and ears.

In the programme notes it says Julian Smith is the chief whip. It explains the job of the chief whip is to win votes for the government, and control party discipline.

We know from previous movements that the government, under the chief whippage of Julian Smith, has lost its most important vote, on the Brexit withdrawal agreement, by 230 votes, the largest margin the country’s history. It has lost others, on the same thing, by a mere 149 votes, and more recently by 58. It has also been found in contempt of parliament – another historical first.

And yet here, on the very morning the government is again taken over by a backbencher called Oliver Letwin, from the same party, it emerges that Julian Smith has given an interview to the BBC, first criticising his prime minister’s entire Brexit strategy over the last two years, and secondly complaining about the “breakdown in party discipline” that he has tried and failed to manage.

He speaks of the greatest breakdown in party discipline “in British political history”. His other great pearl of wisdom is to tell the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that Theresa May would “inevitably” have to embrace a softer Brexit after her disastrous 2017 election, and should have said so.

Though his full comments won’t be aired until this evening, he appears to stop short of drawing a direct link between the biggest breakdown in party discipline of all time, and he, the chief whip, giving a media interview which directly criticises the prime minister’s central strategy for her one and only policy.

It would also appear that he, the head of the government’s enforcement wing, gave the interview under the impression the program would be aired after the UK was out the EU. There is a temptation, when apportioning blame for the the fact that he did not know this, to consider it within the context of Julian Smith’s own comments, the ones about him being in charge of party discipline, and there having been the greatest breakdown in party discipline in history.

Is it possible, sometimes, to feel sorry for Theresa May? The headmistress of a school that has put itself in special measures, and it is not merely the pupils that are flicking ink down her back, and pinning crocodile clips to her blazer, but the other teachers too.

Perhaps, who knows, on Julian Smith’s watch, things just tend to fall apart. There was, for example, the time he was followed around the House of Commons chamber a couple of weeks ago, his own colleagues shouting, “You don’t know what you’re doing!” at him, and him, replying: “I do know what I’m doing, actually.”

That was when, for reasons too complicated to get into, he was made to whip the government into defeating their own motion, but then lost anyway. Or won, if you prefer. It doesn’t matter which way you look at it, its rotational symmetry of uselessness is infinite.

Later this week, we are expecting Theresa May to try and bring her meaningful vote for a fourth time. It will be up to Julian Smith to persuade, cajole, force and bribe as many MPs as possible into voting for it. Why would they possibly listen to him now?

The only other explanation must be that this is Smith’s own way of entering the Tory leadership race, which continues to welcome applicants from the animal, vegetable and indeed mineral wings of the party.

We learn at the weekend that Liz Truss, Gavin Williamson, and even Iain Duncan Smith are all having a tilt at it. There are so many useless candidates, perhaps Smith realises they will surely, in the end have to coalesce around one. And with the party so demonstrably useless, who will then stop him? Why take the trouble of rising to the occasion when you can have it lower itself to meet you instead?

Clive James once observed how all that keeps humanity going is people’s inability to see how others perceive them. If they could, no one would leave the house. That Gavin Williamson really does look in the mirror each morning and see prime minister material is inspiring in its way.

This should be the key message for 2019. If this lot can do it, absolutely anyone can.