The magnitude of the gulf between the cabinet and perhaps a majority of Tory MPs over how to deliver Brexit was on display like an oozing wound on my show last night. The Chancellor was his normal phlegmatic, unsugaring self when revealing the government is reconciled to a long Brexit delay till at least the end of the year – and that the best the prime minister can hope for from the emergency EU council on Wednesday is that the EU’s 27 leaders would allow her a break clause, so that if a Brexit deal is fully approved on all sides earlier, the UK could leave the EU at that earlier juncture. But even so, he conceded there is now no escape from preparing to participate in European parliamentary elections, at considerable financial and emotional cost to the UK.
The point is that Hammond described talks with Jeremy Corbyn and Labour to break the Brexit deadlock as a longish process, which if unsuccessful – as my Labour sources anticipate – would nonetheless yield options for all MPs to vote on, during a Brexit beauty contest.
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