Uk politics

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.

Immediately after the government’s crushing defeat on Tuesday night, a slew of Cabinet Ministers thought that it was inevitable that Theresa May would have to make some kind of concession on the customs union to get a deal through parliament. But, as I say in The Sun this morning, this option has run into two obstacles. First, Corbyn and McDonnell aren’t playing ball. Without their blessing, there is no way you could get 116 Labour MPs to vote with a Tory PM. Secondly, it has become clear that agreeing to a customs union would not only split the Tory party, lead to at least one Cabinet resignation, but would also—according to one senior Cabinet Minister—lose the support of 40 MPs who voted for the deal on Tuesday night.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. That was the message of Boris Johnson’s speech this morning at a JCB factory in Staffordshire. He admitted this week that he regretted bottling his leadership bid in 2016. This time is his last chance to have a go at swiping the ultimate prize – the keys to Downing Street – a prize he’s coveted since he was a boy. Boris’s earliest known quotation is when, asked by his sister Rachel as a child what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said, “World King.” He’s thinner and more smartly dressed than he’s been for years. That might have been influenced by the reported acquisition of his new 30-year-old girlfriend, Carrie Symonds.

Now that the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement has been decisively rejected by Parliament, the challenge, as Theresa May said last night, is to find an alternative way forward. But the reality is that the fall of the agreement is less important for the UK than widely assumed. It did not pin down any long-term trade arrangements. Even in the short term, the main gain to the UK was a transition period which now looks less essential than was the case when it was first mooted over a year ago. It is true that there is now a possibility of tariffs from March 30th but these tariffs are mostly small and the EU has stronger reasons for avoiding them than the UK. The EU exports £54.

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.