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

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

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

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

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.

  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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 –

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

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