Katy Balls

After the narrow victory of the Brexit campaign in 2016, it was often said that the result would lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom. Just 38 per cent of Scots voted for Brexit, so Nicola Sturgeon argued that Scotland was being taken out of the EU against its will, necessitating a second Scottish independence referendum. And in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist party blocked the formation of a new power-sharing administration last year in protest at the Westminster government’s approach to the Brexit Protocol. Now things look very different. DUP MPs may have voted against the Windsor Framework, but polls suggest that Rishi Sunak’s renegotiated Brexit deal is supported by most Northern Irish voters – just 17 per cent oppose it.

Rishi Sunak is on a policy blitz. Humza Yousaf is facing party backlash after losing former leadership rival Kate Forbes from his cabinet. Ed Davey has this morning launched the Liberal Democrats' local election campaign. And Keir Starmer? The Labour leader is once again making headlines for his bid to distance the Labour party from his predecessor. On Tuesday, the party's National Executive Committee met to vote on Starmer's motion to block Jeremy Corbyn from running to be a Labour MP at the next election on the grounds that the party's chances of winning the next election would be 'significantly diminished' if Mr Corbyn was endorsed. The motion passed by 22 votes to 12.

When No. 10 first devised the Illegal Migration Bill, the hope was that Rishi Sunak's crackdown on asylum claims would have a unifying effect on the Tory party. The Bill – which aims to make it so those who arrive in the UK illegally cannot claim asylum – sailed through its second reading. But as it returns to the Commons this week, Sunak is facing demands from both sides of his party to amend the legislation. The most immediate problem numbers wise comes from the moderate wing of the party. Tim Loughton is leading a group of would-be Tory rebels calling for a new safe and legal route to be introduced as part of the Bill.

Rishi Sunak’s Windsor Framework has won support in the House of Commons at 515 ayes to 29 noes. As expected, DUP MPs voted against the deal – after the group's leader Jeffrey Donaldson announced early this week that the party would oppose it. As for the Conservative party, there were 22 Tory rebels, including three former Tory leaders in Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Iain Duncan Smith. Other rebel MPs include Jacob Rees Mogg, Priti Patel, Jake Berry, Jonathan Gullis, Christopher Chope and William Cash. The rebellion is less severe than feared last month The number of abstentions looks to be sizeable - in the region of 48 Tory MPs. However, it's likely that several of those - such as cabinet minister Grant Shapps - have been agreed with the whips.

Even now, months after he was forced to resign, Boris Johnson has a potency that no other British politician can match. Everything he says still catches the attention of Westminster and the media. Like Donald Trump, he enrages his enemies so much that they can seem obsessed. And rumours of a Boris restoration will not go away. ‘If he was six feet under in a coffin,’ says one minister, ‘he’d still have ambitions of a comeback.’ Some MPs do want to see his return to Downing Street, of course. ‘They may be noisy,’ says a member of government. ‘But they’re also small in number.’ Some of Johnson’s critics believe he will only stop being a threat to the government once he is out of parliament.