Robert Peston

The correct reports in Sunday Times and Mail on Sunday this morning that some ministers (not all) want Theresa May to go now, and make way for a caretaker - either David Lidington or Michael Gove - tells me NOT she will definitely go within a few days (though she may) but that the government is perilously close to collapse. Because what it shows is the underlying split in the cabinet between those ministers - Gauke, Clark, Rudd, Mundell - who want to stop a no-deal Brexit at any cost, and those who want to prevent either a referendum or a "soft" Brexit "in name only" - Leadsom, Mordaunt, Fox, Grayling - has become irreconcilable.

As you know, I have been banging on about the probability that the UK will leave the EU without a deal on 12 April. Having talked to very senior members of the government, and also well-placed sources in the EU, it has become clear to me that MPs have one shot to prevent that - and it will almost certainly be this week that MPs will either rise to the challenge or flunk it. How so? Well, the prime minister and the EU will be looking at the indicative votes that are due to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday – on Tuesday sponsored by the PM, on Wednesday under the backbench initiative of Sir Oliver Letwin – to see if a majority of MPs can demonstrate their support for a deliverable alternative to a no-deal Brexit.

All the talk among Cabinet ministers - who as usual in Theresa May’s government know next-to-nothing about what the PM is actually going to do - is that the bloomin’ meaningful vote won’t be held next week after all. "The DUP don’t look as though they are coming on board," said one. "It looks as though she’ll lose by a bit more than last time," said another. "Why would she do that to herself?" If they are right and she does not bring her Brexit deal back for ratification by MPs, then dead too (probably) is the idea she’ll imminently announce the date of her resignation as PM.

I’ve been passed copies of media briefing notes prepared for the junior Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng, who this morning did a round of TV and radio interviews. My source is a political one, not another hack or media person, which I point out to prevent any suspicion that a media company is behaving badly by passing me the document. What is striking – and important – is that Kwarteng has been instructed, presumably by Downing Street, to avoid saying that MPs face a choice between backing the PM’s deal and a no-deal Brexit, even though that is how the PM and the EU’s president Donald Tusk seemed to be framing the choice yesterday.

Will MPs next week really face a simple choice, between May's deal and a no-deal Brexit, or is that a bluff? Such a binary choice was what a dozen cabinet ministers - those who hate the idea that the Brexit delay could be nine months or more - were sure they heard from the PM when they met her at lunchtime today (they included the Brexiter veterans, such as Penny Mordaunt, Liam Fox and Andrea Leadsom, as well as the recent converts, Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock). And it is what the EU president Donald Tusk seemed to be saying in his public statement today. For what it's worth, I have investigated as far as I can the truth of whether there is a third way, with my sources in EU capitals and Brussels.

The PM presented choices to the Cabinet for the letter she is expected to write to the EU’s President Donald Tusk requesting a Brexit delay - without nailing down precisely what she will do. That said, her ministers think she will request a delay until 30 June, predicated on her somehow getting her deal ratified by MPs - with an option of an extension to the end of 2020 in the event she ever concedes her own Brexit plan is definitely an ex-parrot (or dead, for the few of you too young to remember Monty Python). May’s hope is that if this delay schedule is agreed as a legally binding text then it would have the effect of amending her deal - such that the Speaker could not then block her holding the meaningful vote for a third time.

Nigel Dodds of the DUP has not yet agreed a deal with Theresa May to bring his troop of ten MPs - and some of their Tory ERG Brexiter allies - into her camp for that momentous and precedent-smashing third "meaningful vote" on her Brexit deal. This means as of now the third "meaningful vote" remains the stuff of myth and legend; as I said on Saturday, it may not happen at all, or at least not before the European Union council on Thursday. A minister close to the PM tells me the cabinet expects the EU to grant the UK a Brexit delay of nine months - which would of course require the UK to participate in May's elections to the European Parliament.

The prime minister’s frantic last attempt to persuade Northern Ireland’s DUP to back her third meaningful vote on Tuesday involves a promise that if the controversial backstop is ever triggered, Great Britain would adopt any new food and business rules that could be forced by the EU on Northern Ireland. This is a high risk offer by Theresa May to NI’s unionist party - which has huge clout with her because without its votes in parliament her government would collapse. As a minister told me, for the DUP to accept the offer it would have to trust that a future prime minister and government would honour the pledge - which cannot be guaranteed even if May legislates for such alignment (because any law can always be repealed).

Although the prime minister wants to hold another 'meaningful vote' on her Brexit plan next week, it is by no means certain that, when it comes to the crunch, she will choose to do so. I am told by her close colleagues, that two conditions must be met for her to go ahead with the vote, probably on Tuesday. First, Northern Ireland’s DUP must say on Monday that they have, at the last, changed their minds and have decided to vote with her. To be clear, there is no logical reason why they should do this, given that there will be no last-minute alteration to what they hate most about her deal - namely the backstop which is designed to keep open the border on the island of Ireland and is enshrined in the Withdrawal Agreement.

What kind of Brexit delay, if any, would the European Union's leaders sanction, when the Prime Minister asks for one in a week's time, at the next EU Council? Truthfully no one knows. Actually that is only half right. In the implausible event that MPs next week ratify the PM's Brexit deal at the third time of asking, they would grant her a couple of months' postponement of the moment we depart, so that legislative and technical preparations could be completed. Just to be clear, I don't see how she wins. Too many Brexiter and Remainy Tory MPs hate her deal so much that they'll never be intimidated into backing it.

Forget Brexit (I dare you!). The game now, in the Tory Party, is positioning for the looming leadership election. Because I can find no one in the Cabinet or on the backbenches who still believes Theresa May will be PM for longer than a few weeks, such is their fury and agony that we’re 18 days from Brexit and we still don’t know the how, the when, or even the whether we'll leave (OK, so it was impossible to forget Brexit – sorry!). Even those who think the petard that’s hoisting her was made in Brussels say she had a choice about attaching herself to it.