Running down the clock. May is happy to clog the schedule with pointless activity and even to lose votes if it burns time. She wants to set her deal up against something unacceptable. If there’s truth in the Ollie Robins story then that might be A Very Long Delay rather than No Deal. But to some extent that’s a detail.
VB
What’s happening at 8 then?
No idea
Can you get a Polish one as well Pete? Do the Poles allow you have two?
I can have both. I may get my Cannuck one renewed.
Robert Peston on Facebook (via Twitter) just now:
So the PM loses another historic Brexit vote - and by an embarrassing margin of 45.
Yawn.
Nothing changes.
Which is the problem.
Because the EU 27’s government heads want and need reassurance that if they were to make humiliating concessions such that the UK Attorney General were one day able to say there is a guaranteed route out of the so-called backstop for the UK, MPs might actually - at the very last - vote for a Brexit deal.
But if Theresa May can’t even win a majority for a motion that simply notes that talks with the EU continue (sort of) - a motion that is really just a way of wish her luck in the backstop talks - EU leaders will rightfully query how she should could possibly win when MPs are actually presented with a definitively changed backstop?
So this is how it will probably now play out.
On February 27, the PM may finally and pre-emptively - before any vote on the so-called Cooper/Letwin amendment - surrender to MPs’ lobbying and agree to ask the EU for a Brexit delay.
Some of her close associates tell me that she could do this, although it would mean defying all precedent and deliberately facing down her ERG Brexiter MPs - who would go berserk.
The alternative would be for her to continue to maintain a formal position of opposing a delay to Brexit.
But if she continues to insist that a no-deal Brexit on 29 March is the default position, that would lead 15 or so ministers, including a minimum of three in the cabinet (Rudd, Gauke, Clark) to resign - because they are so implacably opposed to a no-deal Brexit that they would insist on voting for the Cooper/Letwin amendment, whose effect would be to force her to sue the EU for a Brexit delay.
Either way, by the end of February the PM will probably be in a position of knowing that any talks that are still going on to tweak her Brexit deal must be combined with a request for a Brexit delay.
At that point, my powers of foresight are exhausted.
The point is what happens next depends on whether backbench MPs do what the senior Tory Sir Oliver Letwin says they must do - which is to launch a coup d’etat, seize power from the executive and vote for the kind of Brexit (or no-Brexit via a referendum) they actually want.
As I have said, their ability to do that is untested and uncertain.
I will elaborate later, but there is no certainty - as I have been boring on about - that they can avert a no-deal Brexit.
Buckle up.
If brexit happens, I probably will at some point.
It was announced much earlier in the day that the reason the ERG were oppossing it is because there was a tacit implication that by doing so they would also be endorsing the Spelman amendment that was voted on a couple of weeks ago and which said ‘no-deal’ should be ruled out.
Everyone knew this, the result was a foregone conclusion so not sure why anyone is getting excited by tonights events. Same old, same old.
I will get a Scottish one when independence arrives.
Mine was due on the 31st. I didn’t want a blue one either 
Every cloud…
The Govt clearly didn’t know as they look even less in control after this shambles. The drafting of their motion was appalling. I wonder if it this deliberate, but I suspect it was due to the usual Derp.
GlesgaDave
I’ve just renewed my passport, but if Scotchland gets independence I guess I could have dual nationality too.
A Mackem and a Scotchman, what a fucking combination 
I’m going to have to give up listening to the Today Program as my veins can’t be trusted to deal with the fallout it creates. Leaving aside Andrea Leadsom’s brainwreck of an interview and the failure to hassle her assertion that it was Labour playing political games that lead to last night’s defeat. Humphries claimed on three occasions that Parliament can’t agree on anything regarding Brexit. This is untrue. The BBC and the Govt can pretend to ignore the fact that there was a majority against a ‘ No Deal’ outcome. Fair enough that it wasn’t legislation, but it is worth being accurate.
I’m not one for conspiracy theories but this is starting to look very dodgy
