My colleague Angus Walker has a grade A scoop on how Theresa May’s chief Brexit negotiator, Olly Robbins, thinks the PM may be able to rescue her Brexit deal.
The headlines are these.
1) He expects MPs to be presented with a choice in March of her deal or a potentially very lengthy delay to Brexit. This is significant since even today the PM denied she was remotely contemplating a Brexit postponement.
2) Robbins concedes that the controversial Northern Ireland backstop was conceived as a ‘bridge’ to the long-term trading relationship between the UK and EU. This will be explosive because Tory Brexiters always feared the PM secretly saw some version of the customs union as the long term destination for the UK.
3) Robbins’s remarks that in the Withdrawal Agreement he would like the words ‘subject to the future trade deal’ inserted after the word ‘necessary’ is especially gripping.
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