Fraser Nelson

The Cabinet is expected to resume talks about Brexit today, reportedly nudging towards a £40 billion offer ahead of a meeting on Friday – but is there much point? Germany still has no government with Angela Merkel’s coalition talks having collapsed. The chairman of the Free Democratic Party ended talks with Merkel last night and her old coalition partners, the Social Democrats, refuse to enter a deal as this would confer opposition status on the populist AfD and thereby augmenting the progress they made in the recent federal elections. All of a sudden, Merkel’s fourth term has been thrown into question, and there’s talk of her doing a Theresa May and holding a snap election. 'It is a day of deep reflection on how to go forward in Germany', Merkel said.

Today’s Guardian has an odd splash headline, denouncing as 'Orwellian' a letter that Michael Gove and Boris Johnson sent to Theresa May warning her that some parts of her government are unprepared for 'no deal'. I’m not quite sure what’s Orwellian about that, or even so controversial. Here's the leaked extract of the letter. 'Your approach is governed by sensible pragmatism. That does not in any way dilute our ambition to be a fully independent self-governing country by the time of the next election. If we are to counter those who wish to frustrate that end, there are ways of underlining your resolve. We are profoundly worried that in some parts of government the current preparations are not proceeding with anything like sufficient energy.

Jeremy Hunt has told Tory rebels that"if we don't back Theresa May we will have no Brexit". It echoes a point Paul Mason once made - a point that you hear quite often: there’s no chance of no deal on Brexit, because there is no parliamentary majority for no deal. It's understandable, given recently chaos, to imagine that if things are falling apart then Brexit might be one of them. Lord Kerr, who helped draft the Article 50 withdrawal clause, said last week that "the Brexiters create the impression that... having sent in a letter on 29 March 2017 we must leave automatically on 29 March 2019 at the latest. That is not true."  Really?

We ran a Steerpike blog entitled "the resignation letter blunder" about how Theresa May put Priti Patel's name underneath her signature. In fact, the blunder was ours. No10 was following protocol, where it's normal to put the recipient's name under the Prime Minister's signature in such letters. We - and I - ought to have known better.

The Spectator’s 31st Parliamentarian of the Year awards took place at the Rosewood Hotel this evening. Here are the winners. The awards were presented by Michael Gove, who stepped in for the Prime Minister at the last minute as she dealt with an issue within her Cabinet.

Amber Rudd had been admirably disciplined on Brexit. She was a passionate Remainer, who performed herself with distinction in the referendum campaign – but then, supported the Prime Minister. Things have been fraught since, and the new dividing line is whether Cabinet members can support the Prime Minister’s official position that 'no deal is better than a bad deal.' In committee today, Rudd wobbled – saying that no-deal is ‘unthinkable’. It wasn't quite as bad as it sounded. Plenty of Brexiteers argued the same during the referendum campaign: of course we'll get a deal with the EU, it's in their interests as much as ours, it ought to be the easiest thing in the world to agree given that we start from a position of complete harmony.

Is Philip Hammond trying to be sacked as Chancellor? First, he messed up his Budget after admitting he didn’t properly think about the politics of hiking National Insurance. Next, he’s refusing to prepare properly for a ‘no deal’ scenario – putting the Prime Minister at a disadvantage when she’s negotiating (the subject of my Telegraph column today). And this afternoon, another blunder: he has unforgivably referred to the European Union as 'the enemy' in what seems to be a bungled attempt to assuage Brexiteers. Here are his remarks to Sky News: 'My message is this: I understand that passions are high and I understand that people have very strong views about this. But we’re all going to the same place, we all have the same agenda...

Theresa May had wanted Ofgem to introduce a energy price cap: it said this would require new legislation and today the Prime Minister will promise to create them by capping the Standard Variable Tariff. The case for the prosecution is simple: about 70 per cent of energy users are not on cheap tariffs, but the ‘standard’ variable tariff which is about £300 more expensive than the best deals. Competition works for those who switch, but for those who tend not to (especially the poor and the elderly) the system is demonstrably not working for them. Centrica thinks otherwise and it sponsored a podcast, which we released yesterday, where I ask its chief executive, Iain Conn, about the market.

A move against Theresa May led by someone with their career in front of them might be seen as a bold attempt to shake the Cabinet into action for the good of the party. But a plot led by Grant Shapps, party chairman under David Cameron, is a rather different proposition. He doesn't seem to have much of a strategy – it looks like he’s readying the freezer bags and coming after the PM, as per George Osborne’s instructions. He blames the Tory whips for leaking his name to the press, and says it will only accelerate things. I'm not so sure.

I’m an admirer of Brian Cox so I was struck by a tweet of his yesterday, where he seemed to have encountered a scientific formula for the Antichrist. ‘If you removed all that is good in Britain, leaving only blimpish sludge, and emptied the residue into one man.’ It turns out that he was referring to the Foreign Secretary. The story in question was one where the Guardian claimed that Boris Johnson had ‘recited part of a colonial-era Rudyard Kipling poem’ in a Buddhist temple. The story was written to mislead the reader into thinking that Boris had read a poem in public in Burma, causing upset to guests. In fact, he’d been reminded of the Road to Mandalay, a poem that has inspired musicians (from Sinatra to Robbie Williams) for generations.

Boris Johnson and Ruth Davidson are two of my favourite Tory politicians: both energetic, eloquent, optimistic, pro-immigration and – in general - liberal conservatives. Both have proven track records of winnng voters in parts of the country that had been inhospitable to Tories. Both are advocates of conservatism for explicitly progressive reasons: but because it’s the best way of helping those who need help most.  So I’ve never worked out why there seems to be a firth of bad blood between them. We saw it in the Brexit campaign: it seemed, as times, that the main reason Ruth joined the Wembley Brexit debate was the joy of giving Boris a kicking.