Robert Peston is Political Editor of ITV News and host of the weekly political discussion show Peston. His articles originally appeared on his ITV News blog.
There will be two more momentous issues discussed at this morning’s cabinet – neither on the PM’s own agenda, but which will be forced on her by recalcitrant colleagues. Yes another two historic decisions. Yawn. One group of ministers – Rudd, Gauke, Clark and conceivably Hammond and Lidington too, inter alia – will warn the
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
The Brexiters in and around the Tory European Research Group are now telling me they are minded to vote against the Murrison/Brady amendment – which would mandate the PM to replace the backstop with some other unspecified arrangement to avert a hard border on the island of Ireland. Why? Well one of them told me
I learned two things yesterday that will give extra frisson to those votes on Tuesday, when MPs attempt to wrest control of Brexit from the PM. First is that the six Tory MPs on the executive of the 1922 committee that comprises all Tory MPs, and who are led by Sir Graham Brady, hope and
The Prime Minister’s plans B, C , D and E are all the same: run the clock as close as possible to 29 March, Brexit Day, so that enough of the critics to her Brexit plan blink at the risk of either crashing out with no deal or seeing Brexit cancelled such that it passes
Which of the Conservative and Labour parties is most likely to split over Brexit? Or perhaps it is more apposite to say which party will break up first, since the gravitational force of competing visions of the UK’s future relationship with the EU are threatening to fracture each of them. On my show last night
What can we expect from the prime minister’s decision to speak with senior parliamentarians to gauge the kind of Brexit deal, if any, that might get through the Commons? I have been talking with members of the cabinet and those close to her – and they are divided on whether this is a genuine attempt
There is no coming back for the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal from the scale of a defeat by 432 to 202, the worst defeat by a Government for more than a century. In all normal circumstances a Prime Minister would resign when suffering such a humiliation on their central policy – and a policy Theresa
Theresa May will lose the vote tonight on her Brexit plan, widely seen as the most important vote in Parliament since the early years of the Second World War, and yet nothing of importance may change – or at least not immediately, at least. How can that possibly be – especially since she could well
The prime minister will tomorrow make a powerful speech – in the heart of Brexit UK, Stoke on Trent – that MPs ‘all have a duty to implement the result of the referendum’, because failure to do so would wreak ‘catastrophic harm’ on ‘people’s faith in the democratic process and their politicians’. Coming as it
Before the big vote on Tuesday night, the EU’s 27 government heads will provide greater reassurances – probably in the form of a collective letter to Theresa May, and within the mandate confirmed at the last EU Council – that the controversial Northern Ireland backstop will not and cannot be forever. What does that mean?
As a hack who lived and breathed the financial crisis, you might think that at the start of 2008 and 2009 I would have been more anxious about what lay ahead than I am today. Wrong. In my understanding of the mechanistic link between a bust banking system and the wallop to our prosperity, I
Here is what I have learned about this morning’s cabinet meeting: 1) The Prime Minister is still refusing to rule out a no-deal Brexit, in spite of pressure to do so from a number of ministers – but most notably from the Work and Pensions Secretary of State, Amber Rudd. In respect of May’s attitude
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
There is considerable straw-clutching in Whitehall and Westminster about the impact of a no-deal Brexit. For example, a respected and experienced minister contacted me last night to give me the good news that the European Commission had decided that, in the event of no-deal, the ports of Dover and Folkestone would be kept open “for
If you want a symbol of the catastrophe Theresa May faces over Brexit here it is: her predecessor David Cameron is advising her how to get some kind route out of the EU – that isn’t the fast one over the cliff – through Parliament. This is like the Pope asking the Chief Rabbi on
Here is the measure of Theresa May’s failure last night, according to an observer of her request to EU leaders for “assurances” that UK membership of the EU backstop would be finite and of short duration. They were ready to help. They assumed a process of officials agreeing a text over coming week would start
It has been a catastrophic night for the Prime Minister here in Brussels. She was rebuffed by EU leaders in her request for a few weeks of fresh work by officials to formulate words of what she called “reassurance”, such that Tory Brexiter and DUP MPs could be confident that the backstop they hate would
Politics is all about words, which only sometimes mean what they seem to say. So if you took what the DUP leader in Westminster said on my show last night you would think that just maybe there is a route through the current parliamentary chaos for the PM towards a Brexit deal that MPs could
The Prime Minister had one job, after she took the greatest office in the land in July 2016 – which was to negotiate an orderly sensible Brexit. Today she will admit she has failed. Because rather than risk seeing an overwhelming majority of MPs vote down the Brexit plan she has meticulously and painstakingly agreed
