James Forsyth

Cabinet today was not as dramatic as some had expected. No one argued for ministers being allowed a free vote on the Cooper / Boles amendment. Indeed, I’m told the Chief Whip’s plea for ministers to stick to collective responsibility went unchallenged. Perhaps, the two most interesting contributions came from Jeremy Hunt and David Gauke.

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

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

One of the bitterest divides in British politics right now is between advocates of a second referendum and those who favour the Norway option. They both want to be the last alternative standing to no deal; and are happy to trash each other in the process. On Politics Live tonight, Tony Blair, the most prominent

Jeremy Corbyn is no enthusiast for a second referendum. He wants to, as his speech today suggested, hold further motions of no confidence in the government to try and force an election rather than have to decide on what other option he is going to support. But having tried and failed in one confidence motion,

Theresa May has won her no confidence vote, and by a decent margin – with a majority of 19. As we expected, the vote has allowed the Tories to — temporarily – unite. May can now say that despite suffering a record defeat for any government on her single most important policy, she commands the

Westminster was braced for a heavy government defeat. But few were expecting a loss on this scale: 230 votes. It is hard to believe that the 116 MPs May needs for a majority can be persuaded to change their minds by tweaks to the backstop. So, what May thought would be her plan, going back to Brussels,

There has just been another series of pointed exchanges between government backbenchers and the Speaker over procedure. Following the Sunday papers and the Boles plan released earlier today, several Tory MPs sought reassurance on procedure from John Bercow. Bercow was strikingly unwilling to give it. He approvingly quoted Willie Whitelaw’s dictum that bridges are best

The Cabinet aren’t even waiting for the meaningful vote to be lost to start discussing Plan Bs. As I say in The Sun this morning, multiple ministers are expecting a major row when Cabinet meets on Tuesday morning—ahead of the meaningful vote. The row will be about what to do once the government has lost.

Cabinets these days are fractious affairs. Ministers take increasingly unsubtle digs at each other as they rehearse the same old arguments. But this week, Theresa May chose to have a pop at someone who wasn’t there. ‘We’re still suffering from George,’ she told her colleagues — a reference to the former chancellor George Osborne. Her

Another day, another defeat for the government—this time on Dominic Grieve’s amendment, which requires Theresa May to set out within three sitting days what she’ll do next if the meaningful vote doesn’t pass. The significance of this is that Grieve thinks that the motion the government would put down would be amendable, so MPs would

The government has been defeated in the House of Commons. Yvette Cooper’s amendment designed to limit the Treasury’s ‘no deal’ powers has passed by seven votes. Now, the Treasury view is that the changes mandated by this amendment are ‘fairly minor’ and won’t stop no deal from happening, or the government continuing to prepare for

Taking the temperature in Westminster today, it appears that Theresa May doesn’t have much more of a chance of winning the meaningful vote than she did when she pulled it before Christmas. The mood has improved a bit for her deal, but by nowhere near enough for her to pass it. Indeed, interestingly the full

Theresa May doesn’t yet have anything concrete to offer MPs who have concerns about her Brexit deal. On Marr this morning, May repeatedly talked about how she was seeking ‘assurances’ on the backstop. But she clearly hasn’t got them yet. Interestingly, May indicated that the assurances she’s looking for are around a start date for

Westminster might it be on its Christmas holidays, but the question that is still on everyone in government’s mind is can Theresa May find a way to get the DUP to back her Brexit deal. As I write in The Sun this morning, key Cabinet Ministers believe that her only chance of winning the meaningful

John Bercow has just ruled on the whole row about whether or not Jeremy Corbyn mouthed the words ‘stupid woman’ at PMQs today. Bercow said that the lip speakers he had consulted thought Corbyn had said that, but no lip speaker or lip reader could be 100 per cent sure what words were used. He