Robert Peston

The Foreign Secretary on Today has reinforced the Prime Minister’s Grimsby warning that if she loses the meaningful vote on Tuesday it will be the EU’s fault. Hunt warns EU leaders to take care the impasse “doesn’t inject poison into our relations for many years to come” and warns that if the EU doesn’t make further backstop concessions “people will say the EU got this moment wrong”. This is a million miles from how EU leaders see the state of negotiations. According to a source they believe the “EU has already made its choice to be as helpful as possible on giving legally binding reassurances that the backstop will apply only for as long as necessary”.

We have a Tory Government and governing party irredeemably split on the biggest question of our age, namely how and whether to leave the European Union. And we have a Labour opposition in a disorderly civil war between backbench MPs and lords on the one hand, and a leadership team under Jeremy Corbyn over a perceived failure to cut the cancer of anti-Semitism from the party – and, perhaps worse than that, the undermining of due process by officials close to Corbyn. In other words, there is chaos on both sides of the Commons, compounded by the collapse to zero in the working majority of Theresa May's administration following those defections to the Independents Group. It is not just the PM of whom it could be said she's in office, but not in power.

Should the UK’s decision to leave the UK be settled in an argument between seven male white middle-aged Tory lawyers plus one woman of Indian ancestry and - on the other side - a single white middle-aged male Tory lawyer? Because arguably that is what’s happening, in the current off-stage conversation over a possible reform to the Northern Ireland backstop between the Tory Brexit European Research Group’s “star chamber” of eight lawyers, on the one hand, and the attorney general Geoffrey Cox – whose outcome could well decide whether Theresa May’s Brexit deal, with all its massive implications for this nation’s future, is approved in the coming nine days.

Can the Prime Minister dare to dream that her Brexit deal will pass – perhaps as soon as next week? It is striking how Brexiters from the ERG group are lining up to tell me how reasonable they are trying to be. After well over a hundred Tory MPs failed to vote for Yvette Cooper's amendment last night, which simply captured the PM's u-turn pledge to allow MPs to delay Brexit, one senior Tory texted me to insist this was "more cock up than conspiracy". He said: "Bit of a mess. Nobody expected Cooper to move the amendment. Letwin had said they wouldn’t. People had left the chamber. Others thought the position was to abstain as the government didn’t shout yes and didn’t shout no. Whips didn’t chase people until nearly five minutes in to the vote.

The prime minister is tonight preparing a dramatic shift in her Brexit policy, namely an announcement that if her reworked Brexit deal is not passed by MPs on or before 12 March she will shortly afterwards give MPs a binding vote on whether or not to go ahead with a no-deal Brexit on 29 March. This would be seen by many as a significant U-turn – because she will promise to abide by the will of parliament, and thereby admit that a significant Brexit delay may be necessary. As of tonight there was still uncertainty among her colleagues whether she would press the button on the volte face and put it to her cabinet tomorrow morning – where it will cause a furious row between Brexiters and Remainers.

  It is playing out just as Olly Robbins - the civil servant negotiating Brexit for the PM - told his mates it would in that Brussels bar, as overheard by my ITV colleague Angus Walker. Because the PM has just said that she will not put a reworked Brexit deal to MPs for a vote till 12 March. Well actually she said “we will ensure that happens by 12 March” - which probably means on 12 March. And that in turn means MPs will face what may be their last chance to decide whether the UK leaves the EU with a deal desperately close to the wire, 17 days before the fateful moment of no return, Brexit day on 29 March.

On my show last night, the Home Secretary Sajid Javid captured why nine of his ministerial colleagues have told the Prime Minister they may have to resign next week (though he won't be joining them). Javid said that a no-deal Brexit would be damaging for the UK, that he didn't want it, that the risk of it had increased but that there was no way to stop it. Well four cabinet ministers and five junior ministers agree on everything but that last point. In two separate meetings with the PM on Monday, they told her that either she has to agree to ask the EU to delay Brexit, if it looks impossible to get a deal through parliament by Brexit day on 29 March, or they'll resign to vote for the Cooper-Letwin amendment next week that would force her to ask for a delay in those circumstances.

The second most important political act yesterday was the impassioned declaration of near UDI by the deputy leader of the Labour Party, Tom Watson. His sorrowful response to the resignation of Berger, Umunna, Leslie, Smith, Gapes, Coffey and Shuker was that they were wrong to resign but they were correct to identify that the party he loves has lost its way, especially over anti-Semitism. Watson was in effect setting himself up as shop steward of a parliamentary Labour Party that feels almost totally detached from the Labour leader and the shadow cabinet.

It looks as though the longest rumoured split in a major British political party since the creation of the SDP almost 40 years ago will happen this morning. The reason I think this is because last light I texted the Labour MPs Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie, Luciana Berger and Gavin Shuker asking them if they were holding a press conference this morning to announce the split, and none replied. For what it is worth, I could also have texted Mike Gapes, Angela Smith or Ann Coffey among other critics of the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

It is time for Labour and Tory MPs to wake up and see the Brexit reality staring them in the face. Which is -- after tonight’s demonstration that the government doesn’t have the votes to push through a Brexit plan of any description with simply its MPs and those of Northern Ireland’s DUP -- all MPs face a simple choice. Forget the idea floated by Olly Robbins in a Brussels bar of a 21-month Brexit delay - which was overheard by my ITV News colleague Angus Walker. I cannot find a single senior serious person in or around the EU who thinks it is going to happen. Truthfully they regard it as an example of eccentric British humour. Second, there is literally no possibility of the backstop being time-limited or altered to give the UK a unilateral right of exit.

The world has become a very strange and unsettling place. Exhibit one is that a senior Tory Brexiter just now pulled out of being on my show tonight, because we didn’t have enough proper Leave-voting Brexiters on the programme. “The programme was startlingly unbalanced! Every guest but me having voted or campaigned for Remain,” the Brexiter said. “I hope you can understand my concern at the lack of balance for one of the country’s top political programmes”. Well actually I could not. Because this senior politician would have been interviewed at the start of the programme, in an impartial way, and with the space to express important arguments.

My colleague Angus Walker has a grade A scoop on how Theresa May's chief Brexit negotiator, Olly Robbins, thinks the PM may be able to rescue her Brexit deal. The headlines are these. 1) He expects MPs to be presented with a choice in March of her deal or a potentially very lengthy delay to Brexit. This is significant since even today the PM denied she was remotely contemplating a Brexit postponement. 2) Robbins concedes that the controversial Northern Ireland backstop was conceived as a 'bridge' to the long-term trading relationship between the UK and EU. This will be explosive because Tory Brexiters always feared the PM secretly saw some version of the customs union as the long term destination for the UK.

Most MPs tell me they believe a no-deal Brexit is a remote prospect. They are wrong. I would argue it is the most likely outcome - unless evasive action is taken much sooner than anyone expects. Here is why. 1) The probability is low of the PM securing substantial enough changes to the widely loathed backstop to win a vote for her deal exclusively from Tory MPs, the DUP and a modest number of leave-supporting Labour MPs; 2) The probability is also low of the PM risking the break up of her party by pursuing all the way to a formal agreement the negotiations just started with Corbyn and Labour on a Brexit deal built on Labour's core condition that the UK must remain in the Customs Union.

I have this mental image of Brexit Britain on a hospital ward waiting for treatment that never comes. We are hanging on for an operation that is supposed to make us stronger and happier, but we still don’t know what kind of procedure it will be – or even when or whether it will definitely happen. This coming Thursday was supposed to be a big day. It was billed as when MPs would vote on whether Brexit should be postponed, and what kind of Brexit they might eventually support. But it now looks as though the consultant in charge of our treatment, the prime minister, will announce on Tuesday or Wednesday that she would dearly love them to hold fire.

With 50 days left before the official date for leaving the EU, we may just have hit peak Brexit mayhem. Can it get any worse than this? Seriously. The cabinet has a three-way split between those who see a no-deal Brexit as economic and political armageddon – the Rudds, Hammonds, Gaukes and so on – those who would prefer a negotiated deal but secretly like the idea of a purer rupture – the Leadsoms, Foxes and Mordaunts – and those sitting in the middle with their fingers in their ears, thinking happy thoughts and hoping none of this is really happening. "It is frustrating how many in the cabinet are just sitting this out" said one minister.

Here is what members of the cabinet said to me when I pointed them towards a statement made in the Sunday Telegraph by the Prime Minister that she is 'determined to deliver Brexit and determined to deliver on time – on March 29 2019'. 'Farcical' said one. 'Total delusion' said another. 'Verifiably untrue' said a third. It's not that they doubt Theresa May is working to take the UK out of the EU. It's just they cannot see how it is remotely possible that departure can be achieved in the less than eight weeks remaining before the official leaving day.

Almost more interesting than what Corbyn and the PM said to each other this afternoon was who accompanied the Labour leader to the meeting. He was joined by his chief of staff Karie Murphy and his director of strategy Seumas Milne (as well as the opposition chief whip Nick Brown) but not by his Brexit secretary Keir Starmer. Why does that matter? In the battle over whether Labour should ever back a Brexit referendum or People's Vote, Murphy and Milne are implacably opposed, and Starmer is battling to keep that option alive. So it matters that in choosing to explain what kind of Brexit deal Labour would support, Corbyn was accompanied by the two influential aides who are convinced that Labour should deliver Brexit and not ask the views of the people again.