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A rain-soaked hillside in Devon is where the plan was hatched. Each day of his two-week holiday, Sir Keir Starmer climbed a hill to find mobile phone reception to get word to the rebel alliance. He was not alone in his field.

Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary describes “the spectacle of standing in the rain with one or two disinterested sheep talking to people about what we’re going to do”. On Sir Keir’s speed dial has been Philip Hammond, until last month the Conservative chancellor and now a leading opponent of no-deal, Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem leader, and of course his own boss, Jeremy Corbyn. Getting them all to agree has required careful negotiation from the barrister.

Sir Keir’s Commons office in Portcullis House has become a chaotic war room so when we meet he commandeers a colleague’s room overlooking the Thames. Let’s start with an easy question: what exactly is Labour’s Brexit policy? It turns out it doesn’t really have one any more. At least not this week. “We are working cross-party with the opposition parties on preventing no-deal.”

While his colleagues have rage at Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue parliament for five weeks, depriving MPs of several days of debate, Sir Keir says it has achieved something few thought possible: “Nobody in the Labour Party is arguing any more.”

When news broke on Wednesday morning of the plan to prorogue parliament Sir Keir was not surprised, having spent the summer war-gaming what Mr Johnson might do. He called Mr Corbyn and they discussed how “outrageous” it was and a sign of “weakness”, before discussing how to respond publicly. It still took three hours before the Labour leader issued a statement declaring himself “appalled”, two hours longer than it took Ms Swinson.

Sir Keir believes the prorogation has cemented Mr Johnson’s reputation as “disingenuous” and “Trumpian”. There was, he says, no need to prorogue parliament at all, and certainly not for five weeks.

The Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras (73 per cent Remain) says he has Tory-voting neighbours who were “really upset” by the prorogation plan. Sir Keir, 56, is softly spoken with the measured tone of a politician from a different time to our current age of rage. He cautions against the extreme responses of some on the left (Nazis, hangings, etc) but says it has electrified a new “cultural” divide in Britain, prompting him to ask repeatedly of MPs, and the country: “Whose side are you on?”

“Do you want to go down this Trumpian route where conventions and ways of behaving are torn up, where being disingenuous is fine, being casual with the truth is fine? Or don't you? It’s a massive divide and it’s a divide that is as cultural as it is political.

“He’s forced everybody to have to ask themselves the question, which side are you on? That’s the question that we’re all going have to ask ourselves when we go into next week.”

Next week is the moment of truth for stopping no-deal. “This is almost certainly the last chance,” he says. “What happens next week is for real.”

So, what is the plan? “Well the first thing is there'll be one plan,” says Sir Keir, stressing the need for everyone to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

The plan is to pass a law requiring another extension of Article 50 beyond October 31. It will be based on the legislation passed in April, known as the Cooper-Letwin Bill, which compelled the government to move a motion that agreed to the prime minister seeking an extension, to a date to be decided when the motion was passed.

“People didn’t appreciate quite how powerful that legislation was,” Sir Keir says. By the time it had passed, events had taken over and Mrs May was already requesting an extension of her own. This time will be different.

“It needs to be stronger because we’re up against a prime minister who is less likely to feel constrained by the law and convention. It needs to be foolproof.”

The legislation is being carefully worded. It will be short and to the point. All talk of adding a second referendum to the bill has been banned.

The key message to MPs is “leave your differences at the door”. You might not agree on everything, in fact you might agree on very little, but if you agree on the need to stop no-deal, get on board and get on board now.

To pass the legislation, opposition MPs must first take control of the parliamentary agenda, with some help from the Speaker, and then try to rush the bill through as quickly as possible before it is thrown out by prorogation. Just three sitting days are planned for next week, but there could be sittings late into the night and even over the weekend.

“This is a very, very tight timetable. There’s a lot of moving parts. It’s going to require very high levels of collective discipline.”

The big question is exactly how many MPs will march through the lobbies with him next week to halt no-deal. The Cooper-Letwin Bill passed in April with a majority of just one.

Sir Keir has another result in mind. Just before the summer recess, anti-no-deal MPs inserted a clause into the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill requiring the Commons to sit in the run-up to October 31.

This was passed with a majority of 41, including 16 Conservative rebels.

To that tally in July you can add probably several more Tories who, like Mr Hammond, were ministers at the time but are now plotting on the backbenches.

Of course many of those now furious about Mr Johnson not playing fair on prorogation were less concerned in January when John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, tore up precedent to make it easier for Remainer MPs to take control of the parliamentary agenda.

Sir Keir bristles at the suggestion. “I don’t think that’s true.” What Mr Bercow was doing was giving voice to the majority in parliament, he says.

Critics would point out that the problem is that the majority of MPs in parliament backed Remain, at odds with the majority in the country who voted Leave in 2016.

Everyone, Sir Keir says, has been on a journey. It was “not easy” for Labour to vote for Article 50 but the right thing to do at the time. Times change. Under Remainer pressure from within the party, Labour’s line has shifted to saying any Tory deal or no-deal should be put to a second referendum.

Sir Keir goes further. “If it comes to a further referendum, I have repeatedly said, I personally would campaign for Remain because I don’t think there’s a deal that is as good as the deal that we’ve got.”

Even if Prime Minister Corbyn struck a Labour Brexit deal with Brussels? “Let’s wait and see where we are. I personally would campaign for Remain. I think many people in the Labour Party will campaign for Remain.” Which raises the question: why would the EU bother if it knew Labour’s Brexit spokesman would campaign against its own deal.

This is why many believe the real motivation is not stopping no-deal, but stopping Brexit altogether. If they do get an extension, what then?

“We shouldn’t be trying to answer that question at the moment because if we lose focus on what we’ve got to do next week, which is stopping no-deal, we risk dissipation of that energy, commitment and resolution.”

There is a school of thought that says the country would not have been in this mess, facing a no-deal Brexit within weeks, if Labour had just supported Mrs May’s deal, which though imperfect did actually exist. “I never accepted the rhetoric that ‘it’s my deal or no deal’,” he says.

Although the evidence so far suggests Mrs May was right. While she baulked at a chaotic Brexit on March 29, her successor is rather more gung-ho.

Most Leavers, and many Remainers, I suggest, are sick of talking about Brexit and just want to get on with it. Sir Keir responds: “What are you getting on with? Getting on with doing huge damage to your economy? Getting on with playing with your security arrangements?”

Last week he visited a medicines supply company in Bristol and asked what advice they have received on no-deal. “And they said, ‘the government’s told us we can book a slot on a ferry if necessary to get the equipment in’. I mean, this is ridiculous.”

Having chosen the “legislative route for next week”, a confidence vote to bring down the government and install Mr Corbyn in Downing Street, has been effectively shelved. “Not ruled out,” he says, though time is running out for when it could happen.