Isabel Hardman

‘Project Fear’ didn’t work out in the 2016 Brexit referendum, with voters turning against the ‘experts’ maligned by Michael Gove and other Leave campaigners. So it’s strange to see the Conservatives reigniting it again in the run-up to Tuesday’s vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal, warning of six months of disruption at Dover and other ports in the event of no deal. There’s no evidence that this squeeze message is really going to work on Tory MPs and whittle down the scale of the expected defeat next week. The return of Project Fear is also a reminder of the danger of a second referendum for those who hope that it might lead to Britain voting to Remain after all.

Brexit has left the three main parties that stand in England in an existential mess, split not just over the fundamental question of Leave vs Remain, but also over how to approach the deal that Theresa May has brought back from Europe. One of the odder splits tore open today, with Eastbourne MP Stephen Lloyd announcing he was resigning the Liberal Democrat whip so that he could back the government next week.

One of the promises of Brexit campaigners, famously, was that parliament will ‘take back control’ of laws that affect Britain. Since the referendum result, it has seemed rather more that the government is taking back control, rather than MPs, with the executive (quite naturally) resisting any opportunity for Parliament to have a say in, well, any part of the Brexit deal. This evening, though, MPs handed the government its third defeat of the day on an amendment from former attorney general Dominic Grieve which would give the Commons a say on what happens if (or more probably when) Theresa May’s deal is defeated next week. The plan, which passed 321 to 299 votes, would allow MPs to amend the government’s plan B.

Jeremy Corbyn has been clear for a while that Labour will vote against Theresa May's Brexit deal in the Commons. But it's worth keeping an eye on the reaction in his party to the development of a second line in the Labour position, which is that the party has a better plan for Brexit. Today the Labour leader urged the Prime Minister to 'prepare a Plan B', telling the Commons that 'there is a sensible deal that could win the support of this House based on a comprehensive customs union and strong single market deal that protects rights at work and environmental safeguards'.

Tory MPs offered a warmer reception to Theresa May's statement in the Commons this afternoon than they managed during yesterday's Prime Minister's Questions. The Prime Minister herself seemed very confident as she explained today's political declaration to MPs. That's about as far as you can go when looking for signs of success in this afternoon's Commons Brexit drama. For instance, straight after the statement, we received confirmation from Iain Duncan Smith that he and other Brexiteers do still find the Brexit deal unacceptable and will kill it in the Commons.

It's 100 years today since women were able to stand for Parliament, and the Women and Equalities Committee marked it with a hearing on the barriers to getting more female MPs. It has only been in the past few years that the total number of women ever elected into Parliament has passed the number of men currently sitting on the green benches, and 32 per cent of MPs are women. This puts the UK at 48 in the world rankings for gender representation in its Parliament, which isn't great. I was one of those giving evidence to the Committee this morning, using research I've conducted for my book, Why We Get The Wrong Politicians.

Is Theresa May about to face a vote of no confidence in her leadership? The Prime Minister is acting as though nothing has changed, to coin a phrase, focusing on selling her Brexit plan to business leaders at the CBI, rather than getting too bogged down with the internal problems with her party. But those trying to organise the move against her had been making noises all day that they may have the requisite number of letters calling for such a vote by this evening. This doesn’t look like it’s going to be the case. Indeed, today a number of Brexiteers including Owen Paterson and Iain Duncan Smith have been holding talks in Number 10 along with David Trimble about a proposed solution to the Brexit deal that might prevent a leadership contest.

One of the more surreal moments of Theresa May’s day so far has been the Prime Minister having to break off from the meltdown of her party to join Prince Charles's birthday celebrations at Buckingham Palace. The Prime Minister can’t have felt particularly like waving a champagne flute around to salute the heir to the throne while her own MPs plot to remove her crown as Tory leader. The announcement from Jacob Rees-Mogg that he is submitting a letter calling for a vote of no confidence suggests that the European Research Group believes there are the numbers in the wider Conservative Party for May to lose that vote.

Philip Hammond held the Budget today to avoid a bunch of Halloween jokes about a zombie economy and so on. To compensate, the Chancellor brought a bunch of random sentences in fancy dress as ‘jokes’. There were inexplicable quips about poaching rabbits, a medley of toilet puns accompanying funding for keeping public conveniences open, and the strangest of all: ‘fiscal Phil says fiscal rules, OK.’ What the Chancellor hadn't dressed up, though, were the series of announcements in this Budget. They weren’t fancy. Or radical. There was some political appropriation, with Hammond trying to deal with a few Labour threats by stealing their policies.

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.