Steerpike

It’s not just the government who have been caught by surprise at Bercow’s vote announcement yesterday, it raised eyebrows in Germany too. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted this morning 'I must confess I was not familiar with the rules of order of the British parliament from the 17th century'. Of course, Mr S, a well known expert on Jacobean constitutional conventions, saw it coming a mile off. But Mr S can’t help wondering how different the Withdrawal Agreement could have been had EU leaders known that without, in the Speaker’s words, 'substantial' changes, the deal wouldn’t be voted on at all.

Today, the Speaker John Bercow dealt a harsh blow to the government's Brexit strategy after announcing that he would block a third vote on Theresa May's withdrawal agreement, unless it changed in a substantial way. Not content though with just one attack on the government, the Speaker also found time to launch a dig at his favourite rival in the House of Commons: Andrea Leadsom.

Leo Varadkar is meeting Donald Trump today but the Irish Taoiseach's bid to drum up a trade deal between the EU and the United States has just backfired spectacularly. In their televised chat in the Oval Office, Varadkar told Trump: 'I look forward to talking to you...about trade, and how much I would like to see a trade deal done between the US and the EU. We've done one with Japan, we've done one with Canada - we'd love to strike a deal with the US, too.' But Trump was not impressed: 'OK, well we'll see, because the EU, as you know, has been very tough to deal with, and frankly it has been very one sided for many, many years. So we're changing that around. And we're starting to get somewhere and if we don't we'll win anyway.' Oh dear...

Following the government's defeat on a motion ruling out no deal, Brexiteer MPs in the Tory party will be asking themselves one key question this evening: if Brexit might not happen at all, should I support May's deal? The issue already appears to have split some of the Brexiteers in parliament, with MPs such as former Brexit secretary David Davis swinging behind May's agreement, while ERG chairman Steve Baker has said he'll continue to vote it down. One parliamentarian who doesn't like he's going to budge though is Brexiteer and ERG member Mark Francois. Speaking to Sky news presenter Beth Rigby following the vote against no deal, Francois was asked: 'I don't understand: why you don't just take her deal and bank the win?

When seven Labour MPs formally announced that they were leaving the party to form the Independent Group on 18 February, it didn't take long for deputy Labour leader Tom Watson to release a video about their departure. In his statement, Watson lamented that his colleagues had decided to leave and suggested that there should be a reshuffle of Labour's front bench, to accommodate the 'Social democratic and democratic socialist traditions' of the party. Three weeks later, on the 9 March, Watson changed tack and announced that instead he would form a new party for social democrat MPs within Labour, called 'Future Britain Group', which had its first meeting today.

What does the Independent Group actually stand for? We know what they are against: Brexit and anti-Semitism. But so far the fledgling group has been somewhat shy about coming up with policies. With TIG MPs this week reportedly entering talks with the Electoral Commission about become a political party, they had better get a move on. Only Mr S. suspects the task won't be an easy one, given that one of their members – former Tory MP Anna Soubry – seems to take a difference stance to the bulk of their colleagues on most issues. To help out, Steerpike has compiled a list of where Anna Soubry stands compared to her new colleagues: Brexit: It's safe to say that when it comes to Brexit, TIG and Soubry are a match made in Parliamentary heaven.