6 September 2019updated 02 Sep 2021 5:47pm

It doesn’t matter how long May delays the Brexit vote, this parliament won’t pass it

Downing Street hopes that by postponing it until the eleventh hour, MPs will be unwilling to risk leaving the EU without a deal.

By Stephen Bush

I’m taking my ball and I’m going home: Theresa May has mothballed today’s vote on the Brexit withdrawal agreement to head off a triple-digit defeat, and is heading on a whistlestop tour of European capitals to persuade them to do something to make the backstop more palatable to MPs.

But of course, nothing is going to be forthcoming. Even Downing Street knows that: before they pulled the vote, they were warning, correctly, that to re-open the withdrawal agreement is to re-open a number of painful fights over fishing, Gibraltar and so on. And the era in which Conservative MPs were willing to take May’s assurances on trust has now passed.