Robert Peston Robert Peston

Theresa May will soon face the decision of her life over Brexit

The Prime Minister does have a strategy to prevent what she sees as the chaos of a no-deal Brexit. The flaw in it is that the strategy probably has a shelf life of just over one week. Because her strategy is to persuade MPs to back her version of leaving the EU in a vote on 15 or 16 January, and in the words of one of her senior ministers:

“I will be shot for telling you this but we are going to lose that vote”.

So what then? Well, amazingly, no one around her – not her ministers, not her officials – seem to know. Why not?

“She won’t tell us” says a minister. “We go to see her. We give her our ideas about what to do next. She listens politely. She even asks questions. But none of us have a clue whether she agrees, whether she is persuaded. She gives us no hints.

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