The EU will turn us into captives if we sign up to this appalling sell-out of a deal

Well, it seems my predictions of last week were, if anything, too optimistic. If MPs vote for this deal, we are bowing our neck to the yoke.

We are preparing to take colonial rule by foreign powers and courts. We are handing over colossal sums of money for nothing. We are giving up the hope of new free-trade deals. We are giving up the right to vary our laws. We are betraying Leavers and Remainers alike: we are poised to abandon any UK influence in Brussels, and yet we are signally failing to take back control.

In fact, we are surrendering control to the EU – and this 585-page fig-leaf does nothing to cover the embarrassment of our total defeat.

In the protocol on Northern Ireland, there is a note almost of malice, as though the EU is punishing us by the surgical severing of part of the UK. From one convoluted paragraph to the next, you can follow the plot to amputate Northern Ireland and keep it in the EU – run by the EU, but with no influence in Brussels except via Dublin.

It is as though a new country has been born, referred to constantly as “the UK in respect of Northern Ireland or UK (NI)”. In the UK (NI), exporters must henceforward label their goods not made in UK, but made in “UK (NI)”. In the land of UK (NI), there is no chance of cutting VAT on tampons, or on fuel, because that would be against EU VAT rules.

No matter how strongly the people of Northern Ireland may want tighter rules on, say, the live transport of animals, that won’t be possible – because all that is governed by EU directives; and on page after chop‑smacking page, it is explained that the people of UK (NI) must obey EU rules on everything from lawnmower noise to the description of preserved sardines to the use of personal recreational watercraft to the trade in coins or tokens that may be deemed to resemble a euro.

And, of course, it is not just the people of Northern Ireland who are turned into captives by this appalling sell-out of a Withdrawal Agreement. Those who drew it up knew that, if they could hold Northern Ireland hostage, then the rest of the UK would remain locked in as well. They knew that no British prime minister could accept the legal division of the UK – and thus the whole country has been trapped in economic and political servitude.