Steerpike

Oh dear. Theresa May's confidence and supply agreement with the DUP is on very thin ice – if not already dead – after the party's MPs abstained on a range of amendments to the finance bill and even voted en masse for a Labour amendment. This is in breach of the party's deal with the Conservatives – the row has been triggered by May's Brexit deal. However, it's not just May who has been caused a headache by last night's Commons antics. The DUP voted for a Labour amendment to the finance bill calling on the Treasury to produce impact assessments of the budget on inequality and child poverty. Yet somehow it didn't pass – the government still won by five votes. The reason? A number of Labour MPs were absent for the vote including one Jeremy Corbyn.

Speaking on the Today programme this morning, Simon Clarke – the Tory Brexiteer who has filed a letter of 'no confidence' in the Prime Minister – declared that 'this is the day we stand at the bar of history'. Clarke and his fellow Brexiteer plotters said that the full 48 letters required to trigger a confidence vote were imminent: 'this day must be the point at which ... action is taken'. Alas it seems today is not the day after all - the ERG plotters have failed to meet the bar. As Isabel reports on Coffee House, Tory Brexiteers are now briefing out that they are giving May time to consider – rather than firing off the final few letters. A kind reprieve from the ERG – or are they just saving face after several weeks of dodgy arithmetic?

This week, Theresa May's government teetered on the point of collapse over her proposed Brexit deal. The withdrawal agreement between the UK and Brussels led to Dominic Raab and Esther McVey resigning in protest. However, May's remaining ministers have since attempted to rally around her at least in the short term. Speaking on Friday, Liam Fox – the International Trade Secretary – gave a speech in which he declared 'a deal is better than no deal'. This is rather different to May's old claim that 'no deal is better than a bad deal'. So, is Fox right? Mr S thought it best to let readers decide for themselves. In theory, Britain is leaving the EU on 29 March 2019. But the legal small print, published by Brussels, shows what this means.

Theresa May has just been doing her best to sell her Brexit plan to voters. But the Prime Minister's pitch didn't go down well with those calling into LBC. The PM's first call came from a Tory councillor who urged her to stand down and let someone else negotiate with the European Union. And she finished off her half-hour stint by being compared to Neville Chamberlain: 'Do you consider yourself the modern day Chamberlain, who also went to Europe and negotiated with a foreign power and came back as having appeased that foreign power and not having stood up for our country?' Mr S. thinks it is safe to say that things could have gone better...

Nigel Farage was back on the airwaves today, and somewhat unsurprisingly, he was not a fan of Theresa May's Brexit proposal. So much does he hate it in fact, that he told viewers: 'There's only one thing to do, when this, the worst deal in history, and that is to put it in the bin. A strong opinion. But had he actually read the 'worst deal in history' he professed to hate so much? Asked by the BBC, Farage had to admit that he hadn't yet found the time: 'Well I've read some of it, and my lawyers read all 585 pages and the more I learn, the less I like it.' But have you read the whole document? 'No, I could take three days off and so I suppose.' Well, to be fair him, it can be hard these days to find the time.

To the surprise of some Brexiteers, today's front pages have been broadly sympathetic to Theresa May and her troubled deal. In fact, it's today's Evening Standard which appears to play to the Brexiteer cause most strongly. The paper's editor George Osborne – May's old nemesis – has tweeted out the front page which reads 'EU takes back control': https://twitter.com/George_Osborne/status/1062667935225970688 Does anyone else get the impression he is enjoying this? Less impressed was prisons minister Rory Stewart, who picked up the front page on Politics Live, and angrily told the panel: ‘This is really crazy stuff here. This is really crazy, really crazy. Because he’s taking unbelievable risk here.