Theresa May has thrown the dice up in the air tonight

I have given up trying to understand Theresa May.

I used to think she was the most methodical and risk-averse of politicians.

But she has tonight thrown the dice up in the air – or perhaps, to use George Osborne’s analogy, pointed the loaded revolver at herself.

Because she is whipping for the Brady amendment that calls on her to rip up the backstop and replace it with unspecified alternative arrangements to keep open the border on the island of Ireland.

And she is doing that to prove to the EU that if it dumps the backstop, her Brexit plan might at the last be ratified by MPs – and yet she knows quite what a long shot that is, and how desperate some would say she seems.

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The point is that she is almost certain to be humiliated and lose the vote on the Brady amendment, because of opposition from the ERG group of Brexiter Tory MPs (those led by Jacob Rees-Mogg) who don’t believe the Brady amendment is specific enough about how the backstop would in practice be shredded, and who don’t trust her to deliver on it unless the amendment is put in her name (which she is reluctant to do).