Portrait of the week | 31 January 2019

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Theresa May, the Prime Minister, set off to seek a change to the Irish backstop of the EU withdrawal agreement after the Commons voted by 317 to 301 for a government-backed amendment by Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 committee, proposing unnamed ‘alternative arrangements’. Mrs May said there was ‘limited appetite for such a change in the EU’ and hardly had the words passed her lips before Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, said: ‘The withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.’ An amendment by Dame Caroline Spelman to rule out no deal passed 318 to 310, but lacked legal force. Amendments from Yvette Cooper, to delay the date of Brexit, and from Dominic Grieve, to set up a series of indicative votes, were defeated. The Commons will vote again on 13 February. The Queen, speaking to the Women’s Institute at Sandringham, made remarks that were obviously applicable to the acrimony surrounding Brexit: ‘I for one prefer the tried and tested recipes, like speaking well of each other and respecting different points of view; coming together to seek out the common ground.’