Robert Peston

There will be two more momentous issues discussed at this morning's cabinet - neither on the PM's own agenda, but which will be forced on her by recalcitrant colleagues. Yes another two historic decisions. Yawn. One group of ministers - Rudd, Gauke, Clark and conceivably Hammond and Lidington too, inter alia - will warn the PM that they will resign after cabinet unless she commits that there will be ANOTHER amendable meaningful vote on 13 February, that would allow them at that juncture to vote to take a no-deal Brexit off the table. Presumably when presented with this ultimatum the PM will concede. But who can be sure any more?

I have given up trying to understand Theresa May. I used to think she was the most methodical and risk-averse of politicians. But she has tonight thrown the dice up in the air - or perhaps, to use George Osborne's analogy, pointed the loaded revolver at herself. Because she is whipping for the Brady amendment that calls on her to rip up the backstop and replace it with unspecified alternative arrangements to keep open the border on the island of Ireland. And she is doing that to prove to the EU that if it dumps the backstop, her Brexit plan might at the last be ratified by MPs - and yet she knows quite what a long shot that is, and how desperate some would say she seems.

I learned two things yesterday that will give extra frisson to those votes on Tuesday, when MPs attempt to wrest control of Brexit from the PM. First is that the six Tory MPs on the executive of the 1922 committee that comprises all Tory MPs, and who are led by Sir Graham Brady, hope and expect the Prime Minister to give official backing to the amendment to her motion that they have all signed. It “requires the Northern Ireland backstop to be replaced with alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border; supports leaving the European Union with a deal and would therefore support the Withdrawal Agreement subject to this change”.

The Prime Minister’s plans B, C , D and E are all the same: run the clock as close as possible to 29 March, Brexit Day, so that enough of the critics to her Brexit plan blink at the risk of either crashing out with no deal or seeing Brexit cancelled such that it passes at the last. In two words, the Brexit strategy is 'Tick Tock'. Yesterday’s conference-call cabinet meeting was a masterclass in Theresa May as bulldozer and ministers 'sitting back', according to one of them.

Which of the Conservative and Labour parties is most likely to split over Brexit? Or perhaps it is more apposite to say which party will break up first, since the gravitational force of competing visions of the UK's future relationship with the EU are threatening to fracture each of them. On my show last night the divisions in the Tory Party were on full display – with the chief secretary Liz Truss implying that the prime minister is wasting her time wooing party leaders to find a Brexit compromise, and should concentrate instead on reaching out to the 118 Tory MPs and the DUP’s 10 who voted against her. What Truss appears to believe is that if the EU can be persuaded to either remove the backstop or put a time limit on it, the PM’s deal would pass through the Commons.

What can we expect from the prime minister's decision to speak with senior parliamentarians to gauge the kind of Brexit deal, if any, that might get through the Commons? I have been talking with members of the cabinet and those close to her – and they are divided on whether this is a genuine attempt to find a workable consensus or simply more Micawberish delay in the hope that unknown events will bail her and her government out. First things first. In the motion the PM will lay before the House, probably on Monday as she is obliged to do under the Grieve Amendment, don't hold your breath for a sharply delineated set of proposals to put back to the EU for negotiation.

There is no coming back for the Prime Minister's Brexit deal from the scale of a defeat by 432 to 202, the worst defeat by a Government for more than a century. In all normal circumstances a Prime Minister would resign when suffering such a humiliation on their central policy – and a policy Theresa May herself said today would "set the future of this country for generation". But these are not normal times and Theresa May is not a normal prime minister. She said tonight she would fight on – subject of course to the Commons not in effect turfing her out if it backs Jeremy Corbyn's motion of no confidence in the government that will happen tomorrow. It is highly unlikely that May's Tory and DUP critics will vote with Corbyn to eject her and the government.

The prime minister will tomorrow make a powerful speech – in the heart of Brexit UK, Stoke on Trent – that MPs ‘all have a duty to implement the result of the referendum’, because failure to do so would wreak ‘catastrophic harm’ on ‘people's faith in the democratic process and their politicians’. Coming as it does from the most important and powerful elected politician in the UK, this dramatic claim is worthy of careful consideration. What is it based upon? Well it is founded on the premise, in her words, that ‘on the rare occasions when Parliament puts a question to the British people directly we have always understood that their response carries a profound significance’.

Before the big vote on Tuesday night, the EU's 27 government heads will provide greater reassurances - probably in the form of a collective letter to Theresa May, and within the mandate confirmed at the last EU Council - that the controversial Northern Ireland backstop will not and cannot be forever. What does that mean? Well for those MPs agonising about whether or not to support the PM's Brexit plan, and who think the word of political leaders counts for something, a few votes may move in Theresa May's direction. And maybe, in the words of one senior British minister, May will be able to frame the letter as being both 'substantive' and 'legally' significant.

As a hack who lived and breathed the financial crisis, you might think that at the start of 2008 and 2009 I would have been more anxious about what lay ahead than I am today. Wrong. In my understanding of the mechanistic link between a bust banking system and the wallop to our prosperity, I could at least broadcast about what needed to be done to clean up the mess. A problem understood is a mendable problem. I am more unsettled today than at any time in 35 years as a journalist because of a political paralysis that makes the destiny of this nation so uncertain. The Prime Minister’s Brexit plan, which would have us pay £39 billion for a largely unknown future relationship with the EU, is set to be defeated. But then what?

Here is what I have learned about this morning's cabinet meeting: 1) The Prime Minister is still refusing to rule out a no-deal Brexit, in spite of pressure to do so from a number of ministers – but most notably from the Work and Pensions Secretary of State, Amber Rudd. In respect of May's attitude to no-deal, the PM was "inscrutable as always", according to one of those in the meeting. But another has told me that Theresa May confirmed she would make a statement if her deal is – as expected – rejected by MPs next week. No minister expects her to announce at that juncture that the UK will go full steam ahead to exit from the EU on 29 March without a deal, on WTO rules. So her colleagues feel there has been some unspoken movement by her away from no deal.

The Prime Minister does have a strategy to prevent what she sees as the chaos of a no-deal Brexit. The flaw in it is that the strategy probably has a shelf life of just over one week. Because her strategy is to persuade MPs to back her version of leaving the EU in a vote on 15 or 16 January, and in the words of one of her senior ministers: “I will be shot for telling you this but we are going to lose that vote”. So what then? Well, amazingly, no one around her – not her ministers, not her officials – seem to know. Why not? “She won’t tell us” says a minister. “We go to see her. We give her our ideas about what to do next. She listens politely. She even asks questions. But none of us have a clue whether she agrees, whether she is persuaded.

There is considerable straw-clutching in Whitehall and Westminster about the impact of a no-deal Brexit. For example, a respected and experienced minister contacted me last night to give me the good news that the European Commission had decided that, in the event of no-deal, the ports of Dover and Folkestone would be kept open “for nine months with no checks”. The minister had been given the great news in an internal departmental briefing. “Wow” I thought. And then “you what!

If you want a symbol of the catastrophe Theresa May faces over Brexit here it is: her predecessor David Cameron is advising her how to get some kind route out of the EU – that isn’t the fast one over the cliff – through Parliament. This is like the Pope asking the Chief Rabbi on the true meaning of the Eucharist: when Theresa May became Prime Minister she defined herself by defenestrating all things and people of a Cameroonish hue (including, most notoriously – and some would argue most self-destructively – packing Osborne off to the backbenches). But now the former prime minister has become her personal Brexit-crisis adviser, as she desperately tries to prevent the UK crashing out of the EU with a chaotic no deal.

Here is the measure of Theresa May’s failure last night, according to an observer of her request to EU leaders for “assurances” that UK membership of the EU backstop would be finite and of short duration. They were ready to help. They assumed a process of officials agreeing a text over coming week would start today, to give her the necessary words that would persuade Tory and DUP critics of her deal to ultimately support it. But it was during the course of questioning her that they concluded such a process – such an extension of talks – would be a total waste of time. Why? Well according to one observer of the conversation between May and the EU27 leaders, “she could not say what would actually deliver a majority in parliament for her”.

Politics is all about words, which only sometimes mean what they seem to say. So if you took what the DUP leader in Westminster said on my show last night you would think that just maybe there is a route through the current parliamentary chaos for the PM towards a Brexit deal that MPs could approve. The DUP’s Nigel Dodds told me: “Well I think that the Prime Minister if I may say so maybe is extending a bit of an olive branch to us in the sense that she is now sitting down with us, acknowledging that we have an issue, acknowledging that it’s not just an issue we have but many in her party are now saying that she’s listening and she’s now prepared to go out she says to get those legal changes that are necessary.

The Prime Minister had one job, after she took the greatest office in the land in July 2016 – which was to negotiate an orderly sensible Brexit. Today she will admit she has failed. Because rather than risk seeing an overwhelming majority of MPs vote down the Brexit plan she has meticulously and painstakingly agreed with the EU, she will today tell MPs she is pulling the vote. Two questions follow. What on earth can she say at 3.30pm today to persuade MPs and the nation that she has a strategy for a better Brexit outcome? And will MPs actually let her pull that vote? MPs of ALL parties – including her own – are queuing up to tell me this morning that they will not give up their democratic right to formally vote down her deal without a fight.