Boris has five days to make a Brexit deal

The prime minister is about to launch himself on the most important and arduous challenge of his time in office, and arguably of his life.

In the course of just the next five days he will try to secure a Brexit deal from an EU deeply sceptical he is prepared to make the compromises they say they need, and with a British Parliament largely hostile to his vision of life outside the EU.

As I mentioned yesterday, he’ll announce the big headline of what he wants in his conference speech tomorrow.

A day or two afterwards, he’ll publish his alternative to that backstop, hated by Tory Brexiter MPs and Northern Ireland’s DUP, his detailed plan of how he would keep open the border on the island of Ireland without what he sees as the permanent and irrevocable subjugation of the UK or Northern Ireland to EU rules and laws.

And then on Friday and Saturday, he’ll embark on a frantic European tour, meeting EU negotiators and government heads, to sell his proposed deal.