Rumour about May’s customs union stance excites Remainers

Could the Conservatives crash out of government in the next few months? That’s certainly a prospect that Theresa May’s allies want to talk up in order to scare would-be supporters of Anna Soubry’s amendment on Britain staying in ‘a’ customs union after Brexit. We discuss whether making the amendment a confidence issue is really the smartest move on our latest Coffee House Shots podcast – and in today’s Evening Standard I report that Remainers really do think the whips would be calling their bluff by adopting this strategy.

But I’ve also picked up an interesting theory doing the rounds among would-be rebels, which is that Theresa May will use her Road to Brexit speech on Friday to announce a concession on the matter of Britain having ‘a’ customs union arrangement of one sort or another. This would remove the high-stakes, last minute wranglings that going all the way to a vote on the amendment to the Trade Bill would entail, and it’s worth remembering that the Tory whips haven’t always got their predictions right when it comes to big votes (just remember how late in the day it was that they realised they were walking to a defeat on David Cameron’s plans to intervene in Syria in 2013).