Theresa May could ask the QUEEN to step in and prevent a soft Brexit, an eyebrow-raising document has claimed.
The suggestion is made in a paper for the Policy Exchange think tank, drawn up by two constitutional experts and passed to Downing Street yesterday.
It comes as MPs prepare to hold "indicative" votes on the way forward tomorrow that are expected to favour a softer Brexit - a UK-EU customs union.
But that would contradict a key manifesto pledge by the Tories in 2017, and overturn months of promises by Theresa May.
So in order to implement the decision, MPs are mulling passing an Act of Parliament and going over the government's head to do it.
In the paper, lawyers Stephen Laws QC and Prof Richard Ekins argue Theresa May could stop the Bill at its final stage - being signed off by Her Majesty.
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"The process of Royal assent has become a formality," they write.
"But if legislation would otherwise be passed by an abuse of constitutional process and principle facilitated by a rogue Speaker, the Government might plausibly decide to advise Her Majesty not to assent to the Bill in question.
"It would be MPs, not the Government, that had by unprincipled action involved the monarch."
It would set up a constitutional crisis with the Queen, who is famously completely neutral on political matters in public.
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Questioned on the shock claims today, Home Office minister Victoria Atkins did not rule out the government taking the so-called nuclear option.
She told BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics: "I think every responsible minister and MP would be very very very loath to do that.
“I would find it very difficult to see how that would come about.”
It came as the Conservative Party erupted into open warfare over whether to bow to mounting pressure and back soft Brexit later this week.
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The "indicative" votes are widely expected to single out a customs union - keeping close EU ties and favoured by Labour - as the most popular option after it won more support than any other last week.
Tory Cabinet minister David Gauke today warned Theresa May it would be "unsustainable" to ignore the will of MPs if they choose a customs union.
But 170 Tory MPs wrote to the Prime Minister urging her to take the UK out of the EU quickly as possible - WITHOUT a customs union.
The letter is said to be backed by 10 Cabinet ministers including Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid, Michael Gove and Penny Mordaunt.
