We’re now heading for a no-deal Brexit – but not just yet

A member of the Cabinet uttered just one word to me about this latest humiliating defeat for the Prime Minister about her Brexit deal: “nightmare!”.

Let’s put this nightmare into context. In January, the Prime Minister’s painstakingly negotiated Brexit plan was rejected by a record 230 votes, the worst defeat for a government ever. Tonight’s defeat by 149 votes is also huge by all measures. And let’s be clear, these are not defeats about rules and regulations for ice cream vans. They relate to the most important economic, security and foreign policy decision this country has taken for many decades. This is therefore without precedent in modern times as a diplomatic and political failure for a Prime Minister.

It is all the more extraordinary that this rejection of her deal leaves all of us in the soupiest fog about the what, the how and even the whether of Brexit, just 17 days before we are supposed to be leaving.