Robert Peston

Call me old fashioned, but I find it impossible to see how any Tory leader could survive crashing to fifth place in a national election and picking up just 7 per cent of the vote – which is what YouGov predicts in the Times. Of course it’s only one survey. The real vote tomorrow may

I’ve been passed a document headed: ‘Indicative votes before second reading of the WAB’ (Withdrawal Agreement Bill). It is an official summary of what the government is hoping to agree with Labour by way of a Brexit compromise, and how to test the will of the House of Commons on what kind of customs union

Today’s joint statement by the 1922 Committee and the PM may seem opaque but it means something very simple and unambiguous: the Tories will have a new leader – and we will have a new prime minister – by August. That is what a majority of Tory MPs want. But for reasons of decorum, they have

I have been fairly quiet for a bit because I have been struggling to say anything useful about what is going on – or perhaps, more accurately, what is not going on. You see we are living through, and in, the mother of all paradoxes: a time when everything and nothing is happening. On a

The 1922 executive committee thinks it has finally laid a surefire trap for Theresa May – by securing a promise from her to hold the second reading of the core Brexit legislation, the Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill, before EU elections in two weeks. The point is that either the bill passes, and she resigns as

Labour’s negotiations on a Brexit pact with the Government may well be pronounced dead today – partly because the party is launching its EU elections manifesto tomorrow and would presumably need to say something about a possible pact other than “don’t know”. To be clear, there are more talks between the two sides this evening.

I understand Sir Graham Brady – chairman of the 1922 committee and therefore representative of all Tory MPs – expects to see Theresa May this afternoon and will receive a response from the PM to the request from the ‘22 executive for her to set out a binding, all-weather timetable for her resignation. Following the

These are the most extraordinary local elections of my lifetime. The Tories’ loss of more than 1,000 councillors is way worse than the gloomiest projections. And yet Labour should be as depressed as the government because the fact that it is losing more than 100 seats, and its share of the vote is broadly the

Theresa May is behaving like a prime minister who has worked out that taking cautious steps to cling on to power is a bankrupt strategy. The ruthlessness with which she dispatched her defence secretary Gavin Williamson, who was till recently her closest ally, is one piece of supporting evidence. The point is that when he

Brexit is fomenting a significant split in the alliance of Labour left-wing activists that keeps Jeremy Corbyn in power, because of his and the party leadership’s reluctance to commit to hold a referendum on any Brexit deal. A senior and influential activist told me: ‘Discussions are under way between leading Momentum activists, anti-Brexit MPs and

Sources close to the Labour leader believe the emergency NEC meeting on Tuesday, which determines the Labour manifesto for the EU elections, will agree a formula that is “a restatement” of the party’s equivocal and prolix party conference resolution of last September. But a senior trade union source tells me that if Unison, GMB and

A concerted attempt by Labour MPs and MEPs to engineer that their party would campaign unambiguously for a ‘confirmatory’ Brexit referendum in the EU elections looks set to flop. Instead Jeremy Corbyn’s preferred position of characterising a new public vote only as an option is likely to prevail, because he seems to have retained the

The International Commission of Labour’s National Policy Forum – which consists of MPs, trade unionists, MEPs, and constituency representatives – has voted unanimously that Labour’s manifesto for European elections should pledge to hold a confirmatory referendum on any Brexit deal. My sources say there were no dissenting voices. On Wednesday, all Labour MEPs voted in

There were no political decisions of any substance taken over Easter. The PM, ministers, all politicians were seemingly too exhausted to do anything but roll the Brexit egg down the hill. So all the political news is about process, after the Cabinet and shadow cabinet made no Brexit decisions on Tuesday, and the 1922 Committee

Under pressure from France’s president Macron, the Brexit delay to 31 October is shorter than Donald Tusk, the EU’s president, and many government heads thought desirable – though still considerably longer than Theresa May consistently said was acceptable. Its impact may well be to turn the Tories into the no-deal Brexit party and Labour into

Gloss it as they may, if EU leaders force a Brexit delay of a year on the UK, contrary to the request from Theresa May – as the EU president Donald Tusk wants – then they will have made a momentous judgement that will cause an earthquake, for us and them. They would be sending

As I mentioned last night, EU President Donald Tusk’s suggestion of a Brexit delay of a year or so seems to have been torn up – notably by France’s president Emmanuel Macron. I was told by those involved in preparations for the emergency Brexit summit on Wednesday that the most likely outcome of the special summit is another