Theresa may

When Theresa May goes to Brussels next week to bat for changes to the backstop, she’ll do so with a large crack in her bat—I say in The Sun this morning. The symbolic defeat that MPs inflicted on her Brexit plan on Thursday night has significantly weakened her negotiating position. The EU doesn’t want to make significant changes to the backstop. When the Brady amendment passed the House of Commons, saying parliament would accept the deal if the backstop was replaced, the EU responded by saying that they didn’t think this parliament majority was ‘stable’. Thursday night’s vote helps them make that argument.

After Theresa May mysteriously evaporated from the Commons following tonight's government defeat, Downing Street has issued a statement insisting that nothing has changed. The official line is, somewhat tortuously, that the previous set of indicative votes from MPs were the ones that mattered, whereas this one didn't. A No.10 spokesman said: 'While we didn't secure the support of the Commons this evening, the Prime Minister continues too believe, and the debate itself indicated, that far from objecting to securing changes to the backstop that will allow us to leave with a deal, there was a concern from some Conservative colleagues about taking no deal off the table at this stage.

I have this mental image of Brexit Britain on a hospital ward waiting for treatment that never comes. We are hanging on for an operation that is supposed to make us stronger and happier, but we still don’t know what kind of procedure it will be – or even when or whether it will definitely happen. This coming Thursday was supposed to be a big day. It was billed as when MPs would vote on whether Brexit should be postponed, and what kind of Brexit they might eventually support. But it now looks as though the consultant in charge of our treatment, the prime minister, will announce on Tuesday or Wednesday that she would dearly love them to hold fire.

Number 10 had hoped that if it could hold off the Cooper amendment again next week, then it could eke out a concession from the EU on the backstop. But as I say in The Sun this weekend, this approach has been complicated by Jeremy Corbyn’s soft Brexit plan. This scheme, obviously, appeals to the EU: it would keep Britain in the customs union and following many of the rules of the single market. ‘The Labour party and the EU are operating in tandem to some extent, which is worrying for us’ frets one Cabinet Minister. So, May needs to persuade Brussels that such a deal couldn’t get through because her government would collapse as soon as she proposed it.

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, went off to Brussels again to talk about ‘alternative arrangements’, for which parliament had voted, to the Irish backstop in her EU withdrawal agreement, which parliament had rejected. First she gave a speech in Northern Ireland, saying: ‘There is no suggestion that we are not going to ensure in the future there is provision for this insurance policy… the backstop.’ Lord Trimble (once an Ulster Unionist, now Conservative), the winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, said he was ‘exploring’ the possibility of a legal challenge to May’s deal on the grounds that it undermines the Belfast Agreement of 1998.

Don’t expect much movement on Brexit this side of Valentine’s Day, I say in The Sun this morning. There are two reasons for this. First, EU leaders are irritated with Theresa May. She signed off on a deal with them, assured them it could get through the Commons and then lost by a record margin. They are now sceptical when the British indicate that this or that change could get the deal through parliament. Despite the Brady amendment passing, the EU are still doubtful about what would get a deal over the line. But there is another reason beyond their irritation why the EU are holding off from engaging with Mrs May. They want to see what happens when the Commons next votes on Brexit on the 14th of February.

Theresa May will soon arrive in Brussels with a series of unlikely demands. She must tell the European Union that she wants to re-open a deal that she was hailing as not just the best, but the ‘only deal possible’ a few weeks ago. Parliament has now made her eat her words. It is a testament to her predicament that this counts as a triumph for her. She has narrowly avoided a far worse fate. Had parliament voted another way — rejecting Graham Brady’s amendment and passing Yvette Cooper’s — she would have been sent into the negotiating chamber with nothing to say. She wouldn’t have been able to tell the EU what the Commons wanted.

You could tell that the result of tonight's vote on the Brady amendment (which calls for alternative arrangements to replace the Northern Irish backstop) came as a surprise to those at the top of government from the look on Chief Whip Julian Smith's face as he re-entered the Commons. He looked as though he had spent the past few hours trapped in a ghost house of horrors at a funfair. Smith had, like his colleagues in Downing Street, thought that this amendment was going to fail with a narrow margin until minutes before the result was announced. Instead, it passed with a surprising majority of 16.

Theresa May has met Tory MPs tonight in a last-ditch effort to try and persuade them to vote for the Brady amendment tomorrow. She said that she would go back to Brussels and push for ‘fundamental changes’ to the backstop. But to do that, she needed to be able to show the EU that parliament was behind her—and so, MPs had to vote for the Brady amendment. May said that the government would whip in favour of Brady, essentially making it government policy. (Some in the room, though, say that May suggested in one answer that this would be subject to Cabinet agreement). Getting the Brady amendment through will be an uphill task. As Katy reported earlier, the ERG is currently not planning to vote for it.

Tuesday is the last chance for those MPs who want to secure as meaningful a Brexit as possible, I write in The Sun this morning. That evening, MPs will vote on a series of Brexit amendments designed to show the EU what kind of withdrawal agreement the Commons would accept. If one of them passes, then Theresa May can go back to Brussels and say: look, this is what will get the deal through my parliament. It would give her a decent chance of getting the EU to engage. But if none of these amendments can muster a majority, then the EU will simply sit tight. It knows that this parliament is fiercely opposed to no deal, and so isn’t concerned that the UK will actually go down that route. So far, there are a variety of amendments down.

I learned two things yesterday that will give extra frisson to those votes on Tuesday, when MPs attempt to wrest control of Brexit from the PM. First is that the six Tory MPs on the executive of the 1922 committee that comprises all Tory MPs, and who are led by Sir Graham Brady, hope and expect the Prime Minister to give official backing to the amendment to her motion that they have all signed. It “requires the Northern Ireland backstop to be replaced with alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border; supports leaving the European Union with a deal and would therefore support the Withdrawal Agreement subject to this change”.

The Commons has grown rather used to Theresa May giving an update on Brexit each Monday afternoon, and still more used to the Prime Minister offering precious little in the way of new information each time she does so. Today's statement was a little different, in that May is now asking MPs for more information, rather than MPs turning on her and accusing her of not telling them anything. She laboured rather heavily on the point that Jeremy Corbyn has so far refused to attend the cross-party talks designed to work out an agreement that the Commons can stomach, introducing it early in her statement, and returning to the point again after the Labour leader had finished talking.

Today’s Cabinet conference call was more illuminating in terms of direction of travel than the details of what Theresa May is actually going to do. It is now clear that May’s approach is to try and put the Tory DUP alliance back together by getting something on the backstop rather than trying to find some cross party consensus. One of the reasons for this is that the Labour leadership’s reluctance to play ball makes it very hard to get the numbers for any compromise deal. I am told that David Lidington, who had been leading the cross party talks, reluctantly acknowledged this point. As one Cabinet Minister put it to me, ‘This kills the system’s desire for a customs-union style solution.

Theresa May has just given a statement in Downing Street in which she apparently said absolutely nothing. The Prime Minister walked out to the lectern outside No.10 and offered the sort of update on her diary that is normally sent out by email from the Downing Street press office. She said that she had held talks this evening 'with the leader of the Liberal Democrats, and the Westminster leaders of the SNP and Plaid Cymru', adding that 'I am disappointed that the leader of the Labour Party has not so far chosen to take part'. After a day of complaining that the Prime Minister hadn't yet picked up the phone to him, Jeremy Corbyn has refused to meet May until she rules out a no-deal Brexit.