Robert Peston

Nigel Farage says his decision not to run in Tory-held seats, but to contest Labour ones, eliminates the risk that there will be another referendum to decide whether we quit the EU. This is nonsense. It is helpful to Boris Johnson - who like Farage sees a referendum as pure poison - that the Brexit Party will not be battling him in his backyard. But Johnson lacks a majority right now (Obvs! Why else is the misery of an election being inflicted on us?) And the Tories are highly likely to lose seats in Scotland and in and around London to parties in favour of a referendum or staying in the EU, namely Labour, the Lib Dems and SNP. Which is why the Tories DESPERATELY need to pick up seats from Labour in the North and midlands.

Nicola Sturgeon says she wants to form a “progressive alliance” after the election to evict Boris Johnson from 10 Downing Street – which in practice means an arrangement with Labour to make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister (this could be a formal coalition though Sturgeon told me she would prefer a less constraining arrangement). And she also says that in the event parliament is hung, on 13 December, there is literally no chance she would sustain the Tories in power – even if Johnson did a dramatic vote face and agreed she could have her cherished referendum on independence for Scotland. Which means that a vote for the SNP can be seen as a vote for Corbyn to become PM.

The two most important speeches to date of the election campaign have been made by the Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor, Sajid Javid and John McDonnell, and not by their respective leaders. And it is just possible these will still be the most important speeches in five weeks time, on polling day. Because they set out how much each of the big parties would and could spend and invest in the event that either wins wins a majority of seats and could govern without the support of shackles or deals with other parties. McDonnell’s speech does something more, which ought to make Boris Johnson very anxious indeed. He makes an explicit promise to transfer money and POWER to the North of England. This may be hugely important.

The cliche, from my memory already creaking under the political strain, is that oppositions never win elections, governments lose them. Well this election is only a few hours old and Boris Johnson and his team – who let's not forget – have been gagging for this election for months are doing a spectacular job of mucking it up. There's been Jacob Rees-Mogg and Andrew Bridgen engaging in a humiliating double act of insensitivity towards the victims of the Grenfell tragedy. There's been the Tory candidate in the Gower revealed to have said benefit claimants should be put down.

'It's going to be fun'. Thus a beaming Jeremy Corbyn announced that he had decided his condition for a general election had been met, namely that there won't be a no-deal Brexit on October 31. And so he fired the starting gun on six weeks of campaigning before a polling day (probably) of December 12. I personalise the decision as Corbyn's because that is how his fellow shadow cabinet members characterised it to me. "This is what Jeremy wants", one told me. "He was dead set on it", said another. And some of them are filled with foreboding – either because they would much rather there is a Brexit referendum before we're asked to choose a new government, or because they fear Labour cannot repeat its popularity surge of 2017.

The Scottish National Party and Lib Dems have joined forces to attempt to force a general election in early December, but on a different timetable from that wanted by Boris Johnson and without any further push to see Johnson's Brexit deal approved by MPs. The Westminster leaders of the two parties, Ian Blackford and Jo Swinson, have adopted a twin track approach. They have written to the President of the European Union, Donald Tusk, asking for a Brexit delay to 31 January, in line with the terms of the Benn Act, with no provision for an earlier withdrawal from the EU. To provide confidence that this delay will lead to a resolution of the crisis, they are promising to push for a general election within that timetable (see below for the letter).

Last night I took a short nap and had the strangest dream. In it, the Tory prime minister made clear that unless the opposition allows him to have a general election on 12 December his government would go on strike. The legislation to implement the Brexit deal he cherishes would be put on hold. The budget that his Chancellor told me on my show less than 24 hours ago would definitely take place on 6 November would be cancelled. And Johnson would work day and night to try and force an election. Naturally these were all the wild imaginings of my sleeping brain. A Conservative PM would never contemplate such officially sanctioned anarchy.

The important vote today will be on the timetable, or programme motion, for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, the law that must pass before Brexit. The government wants it on the statute book by 31 October. Labour will try to humiliate the PM by forcing a delay. One minister tells me that the programme motion is therefore the ‘real meaningful vote’. Tory rebels say they will probably back Boris Johnson’s timetable if he enshrines the protection of environmental standards and workers’ rights in the bill and if the bill transfers to parliament power to decide whether transition to full Brexit is to last 14 months, 26 months or 38 months. But if Johnson gives in to the Tory rebels he risks alienating the Brexit Spartans of the ERG.

The Prime Minister will today send, but not sign, a letter requesting a Brexit delay till January 31 2020, and will simultaneously tell EU leaders that Parliament wants the delay, not him or his government. This will put him in all-out conflict with MPs, who have ordered him to ask EU leaders for a three-month Brexit delay, under the terms of the Benn Act they forced on him. On the advice of his Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, Johnson believes he will be complying – in a narrow sense – with the terms of the Benn Act when his EU ambassador Sir Tim Barrow hands an unsigned photocopy of the pro forma letter contained in the Benn Act to the EU President, Donald Tusk.

There is a magnificent paradox – the Taj Mahal of paradoxes, let's hope NOT the RMS Titanic of paradoxes – in the opposition of Northern Ireland's DUP to Boris Johnson's Brexit. Johnson's replacement to the backstop, by design, keeps the province much more closely aligned with the tax and business rules of the EU than would be true of Great Britain. It does so in order to keep the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland free of friction and free of opportunities for smugglers and terrorists to return to their toxic ways of yore. For the DUP, this alignment introduces a fat new border between NI and GB, in the form of customs and regulatory checks in the Irish Sea. And of course it is wholly understandable that any such border will trouble unionists.

The Saturday vote on Boris Johnson's deal will be closer than people think. Around 18 or 19 of the Tory rebel exiles will vote for it, subject to a Letwin-ish amendment that the Benn Act applies until the whole of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill is law. Boris Johnson will see that amendment as holding the feet to the flame of the Brexit Spartans. He won’t hate it, whatever his public position. Because the ERG Spartans will fear if they vote against the deal and the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, that a Brexit delay and no Brexit will follow. Now, the DUP’s opposition to Johnson’s deal is a challenge for Johnson.

This I think is important. There may be an agreement between Brussels and London negotiators on a deal. But no detailed text has yet been shared with the 27 EU leaders and their respective governments - so, it looks way too late for EU leaders to endorse a formal Brexit deal with Boris Johnson at the EU Council tomorrow and Friday. Which means the best the UK PM can hope for is a political discussion that sends out a positive message on the prospects for a deal. Which in turn means that MPs cannot vote on a deal this Saturday, there can be no meaningful vote. Which in turn means that even if Boris Johnson does not want a Brexit delay, there is no earthly way (that I can think of) that he can avoid one, if he wants a Brexit deal (which he does). And one other thing.

We should know on Wednesday night whether Boris Johnson has his Brexit deal proper, or whether he has an outline deal that will require a few more weeks of technical talks, or whether the gap is unbridgeable. Why? Because Donald Tusk has made it clear there will be no serious negotiations at the EU council itself on Thursday and Friday, just a rubber stamping exercise. But Johnson knows that if he wants an actual deal this week, he’ll have to sign up to something very like a Northern Ireland-only backstop, which would represent a massive eating of humble pie – not cake – for him. It would also be hard to sell to the DUP, who were in to see him on Monday night and 'don’t think' they are about to be sold out.

This is more an election manifesto launch than a conventional Queen’s Speech, because Boris Johnson simply does not have the numbers in the Commons to legislate for all – or any – of the measures announced today. At the risk of being sexist and aide-ist, the legislative programme shows the strong influence on the PM of the two people who seem most influential on him: his partner Carrie Symonds and his chief aide Dominic Cummings, with a package of environment and animal welfare measures (Symonds’ passion) and a bunch of stuff to reinforce the UK’s science and research (Cummings’s).

I pass on, with little confidence or real understanding, that Boris Johnson seems to believe that Leo Varadkar and Dublin have lessened their objections of principle to his Brexit offer. Maybe both sides are moving in a significant way. We'll see. What I should point out however is that if the negotiations were to collapse this weekend, that would be the worst timing for Johnson, because it would spur rebel Tory MPs to use SO24 next week to take control of Commons business – and they would try to get a motion passed in favour of a referendum on May's gone-but-not-forgotten Brexit deal. When that flopped (as it probably would), the rebels would go for a vote of no confidence, to engineer Johnson's removal. As I understand it, this has been their plan.

This morning when Angela Merkel told Boris Johnson his Brexit offer did not provide the requisite confidence that the border on the island of Ireland would be kept open while preserving the integrity of the EU’s single market, it looked as though any Brexit deal was dead - and that the Prime Minister would therefore now focus all his efforts on achieving a no-deal Brexit, while MPs would focus all theirs on forcing him to ask for a Brexit delay. Tonight the president of the European Parliament, David Maria Sassoli, met Johnson and reinforced Merkel’s message that the British offer falls well short. So a Brexit deal is all over bar the shouting? Not quite, but almost. Technical talks between the Article 50 Taskforce and the UK’s negotiator rumble on.

The word habitually used by EU negotiators to characterise Boris Johnson's Brexit offer is "uncertainty". They talk of "uncertainty" about how the new customs border on the island of Ireland would work, about whether all the necessary checks could really take place away from the border. They say there is "uncertainty" about whether this new customs border would undermine the principle of sustaining an all-island economy. They talk about "uncertainty" around the VAT regime for Northern Ireland and the EU. They talk about "uncertainty" about the operation of the single market for goods and food on the island of Ireland, and the proposed new checks on goods and food flowing back and forth between Northern Ireland and the Republic.