Isabel Hardman

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Vote Leave's Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm"] The Monty Python-esque scrapping in the ‘Leave’ camps may calm down a little after the Vote Leave campaign this evening announced a number of changes that will satisfy some of its rather agitated MP members. As well as appointing Lord Lawson as the chairman of the board, Vote Leave is changing the members of that board, with Matthew Elliott, Dominic Cummings and Victoria Woodcock stepping down.

Theresa May’s decision to say that the draft settlement for Britain’s relationship with the EU forms ‘a basis for a deal’ has made David Cameron’s rather difficult day - which has involved the Prime Minister trying to insist that he has got the deal he was after, even though his demands on benefits in particular have been watered down - a little easier. It is the strongest indication yet that the Home Secretary will campaign to stay in the EU after all. This is the statement she released this evening: ‘EU free movement rules have been abused for too long and EU law has stopped us deporting dangerous foreign criminals.

This is the analysis of the latest EU referendum negotiations in tonight's Evening Blend email, a free round-up of the day's political events. Click here to subscribe. Today in brief The EU renegotiation entered its endgame, with European Council president Donald Tusk saying he will publish proposals for a draft deal tomorrow at noon… …as eurosceptics continued to attack the plans for an emergency brake on in-work benefits for migrants. The British Medical Association announced next week’s junior doctors’ strike will be going ahead. A committee of MPs blasted the ‘catastrophic’ conditions that failed charity Kids Company had been allowed to operate in - read Miles Goslett’s original scoop exposing the charity for the first time here.

David Cameron and Donald Tusk have been discussing Britain’s beef with the European Union over a dinner of beef this evening. The European Council president has just left, telling reporters there was 'no deal'. Top of the Prime Minister’s menu was the issue of benefits that has been so chewy for him during his renegotiation. Cameron now appears to be seeking to beef up (sorry) the emergency brake offer that his eurosceptic critics described only on Friday as a ‘sick joke’, arguing that it must come into force straight after the referendum result, that the present levels of EU migration to the UK could be sufficient to trigger it, and that it can stay in place ‘long enough to resolve the underlying problem’.

You can tell when Michael Gove is driving all over another one of the policies of his predecessor Chris Grayling purely by the volume of incredibly polite language and fulsome praise that he deploys when doing so. In a written ministerial statement published today, the Justice Secretary announces that he will not be going ahead with major changes to the legal aid system designed by Grayling when he was Justice Secretary. The statement says the following: I would like to place on the record my gratitude for the determined, yet sensitive, way in which my predecessors pursued these economies. Gove also praises the ‘careful negotiation’ that Grayling carried out on the changes.

It’s fair to say that David Cameron’s answer to John Baron at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, in which the Tory leader basically confirmed to his backbench colleague that he was ignoring him, hasn’t exactly helped relations with the eurosceptics in the Tory party. The row was splashed across the front page of the Sunday Telegraph this weekend, and I now understand that Baron has secured a Commons debate that will take up the issue he has been trying to raise with the Prime Minister.

When will ministers hold their vote on Trident renewal? The Sun reports today that the ‘main gate’ decision on the size of the fleet will take place by the end of March, throwing Labour into disarray ahead of elections in Scotland, Wales, London and local government. Cunning thinkers in the Tory party point out that for the vote to have maximum political effect, it needs to take place closer to the start of March. This is so that MSPs can also have a debate on Trident in the Scottish Parliament before Holyrood rises on 23 March for the election campaign.

Even though, as Fraser argued last week, Google has done nothing wrong in agreeing to pay £130 million to settle its UK tax claims, MPs were in a furious mood about the agreement when they discussed it in the Commons this afternoon. John McDonnell asked an urgent question on the deal, and found, unusually, that he had support from across the House. It wasn’t just Labour MPs who stood up to condemn what they saw as one standard for their constituents, who are hounded by the taxman over relatively small claims, and another for big powerful multinationals like Google. Tory MPs joined in, too, with Steve Baker telling David Gauke that the deal was ‘at once derisory, substantial, lawful and completely unacceptable to the public’.