Brexit

The consensus in the Conservative party is that Theresa May's visit to the 1922 Committee last night hasn't materially changed anything. Those who want her gone are still plotting her demise. A larger group of her MPs are very frustrated and unhappy. And there are still a good number of loyalists prepared to make supportive noises about the Prime Minister in the Chamber or 'crunch' meetings like the one last night. What this does suggest is that there won't be another flood of letters calling for a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, though the working theory remains that it is more likely that the threshold of 48 is reached by accident rather than as a result of a concerted campaign.

Theresa May should offer to go to the 1922 Committee every week between now and March 2019. Her appearance led to a, predictable, rallying round. There was the usual desk banging and lots of calls for unity. I’m told there were about half a dozen questions on tone and language following the hideous quotes given to the Sunday papers. Tellingly, Steve Baker, the ERG’s lead organiser, tried to turn the tables and present his group as the real loyalists. He asked the Prime Minister if those Tory MPs saying they would vote down no deal were hurting the her negotiating position. She agreed that this was not helpful. As one Cabinet Minister said to me afterwards, if you’re expecting fireworks when the Prime Minister comes to the 1922, you’ll always be disappointed.

Theresa May is to face her MPs at the 1922 Committee tomorrow, it has been confirmed. There had been calls for the Prime Minister to do so, after feverish speculation that Tory MPs were plotting to remove her because of her disappointing Brexit performance. She has clearly decided to take on those critics and face her party, rather than hide and hope that this is all going to go away. One of the reasons MPs are increasingly dissatisfied with the Prime Minister is that she isn't offering any sense of progress towards a deal, and there will again be demands for her to show that she will win a concession from Brussels and secure a deal.

Theresa May tried her best to persuade grumpy MPs that a Brexit deal was still in sight when she addressed the Commons this evening. With colleagues from across the Conservative party losing faith in No 10's negotiating strategy, the Prime Minister insisted that '95 per cent of the Withdrawal Agreement and its protocols are now settled'. The trouble is the remaining 5 per cent is the most difficult. As May herself admitted, the main sticking point is 'a considerable one': the Irish border. With the Brexit talks at an impasse over the terms of the Irish backstop – the arrangement the UK would fall back on to avoid a hard border if no new trade deal is in place by the end of the transition – few believe a solution is in sight.

Dominic Raab - 'We need to hold our nerve' Andrew Marr was joined by the Brexit Secretary as the deadline for achieving a deal with the European Union draws ever closer. Marr asked Dominic Raab about rumours that the mood in the party is restless enough to trigger a leadership contest against Theresa May, with the influential 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers reportedly nearing the critical threshold of 48 signatures. Raab told his colleagues that now was the time 'to play for the team': AM: What is your message to all of your colleagues who look at this and say 'This is a complete shambles'? DR: We're at the end stage of the negotiation. I think it's understandable there are jitters on all sides of this debate. We need to hold our nerve.

If Britain crashes out of the EU with no deal and the Conservatives plunge to a defeat against Labour in a subsequent general election, Theresa May, not without reason, will take the blame. But the blame will not be all hers. William Hague will deserve a fair slice of it as well.   It has become quite clear that May is not going to achieve a decent deal. The task is beyond her. She does not have the imagination to know where to go next, and she has already painted herself into a corner. She staked her entire authority on her Chequers plan – a solution which, it soon became clear, had virtually no support other than that of May herself.

It always amazes me that people think it is normal and acceptable to have hate-crime legislation. To have laws which allow for the harsher punishment of people who entertain prejudiced thoughts while committing an offence. To have it written into the actual statute books that the man who punches a Buddhist because he hates Buddhism can be punished more severely than the man who punches a Buddhist because he hates that individual Buddhist for some reason. When are we going to twig that this represents the punishment of thought, of ideology, of belief (warped belief, but still)? I don’t like that Britain has become a country in which people, especially the political class, think it is okay for the state to punish individuals for what they think.

In the Prime Minister's statement to the House, Theresa May did her best to insist that despite an impasse in the Brexit negotiations it was business as normal. However, for all May's claims that the differences between the UK and the EU were solvable, the hostile questions that followed from MPs showed just how hard it would be to get any deal through Parliament. Jeremy Corbyn's attempts to say that the government's 'Groundhog Day' Brexit plans would fail Labour's six Brexit tests were met with laughter and derision. The Leader of the Opposition's shouty performance gave the beleaguered Prime Minister little reason for worry. However, the questions from the backbenchers did.

Sunday night was when the deal on the Irish backstop was meant to be done. But, as I say in The Sun this morning, this now seems unlikely to happen. The UK  and the EU are just too far apart on too many issues. There are two big issues at play. One, whether there should be a UK-wide backstop or one for Great Britain and another for Northern Ireland. I am told that at Thursday’s meeting of the inner Cabinet, ministers were told that the EU has not yet agreed to a UK-wide customs backstop. The second question is whether the backstop should be time limited. One member of the inner Cabinet who attended its discussion on Thursday night tells me that the meeting ‘didn’t really settle anything’. I am told that ‘The PM chaired as opposed to opined’.