Theresa May fights for her premiership – and reveals Trump’s advice

Theresa May appeared on the Andrew Marr sofa with her premiership at its most vulnerable point since the disastrous snap election. After a week of frontbench resignations, a US Presidential visit that resulted in humiliation, a growing eurosceptic rebellion and a downturn in the polls, May belatedly tried to sell her Brexit blueprint to the public.

The Prime Minister began by attempting some honesty – she told Marr that she did accept that the position agreed at Chequers last Friday was different to what was set out in her Lancaster House speech. However, she insisted that the change was minimal and that competitive free trade deals were still possible – she refused to explicitly say that the common rulebook would make trade deals harder to forge. On the topic of that rulebook – which would see the UK agree to align (and become a rule-taker) on goods including agri-food – May said her former Brexit Secretary David Davis had been kept in the loop despite reports to the contrary.