Katy Balls Katy Balls

What Theresa May needs to go right today to avoid another historic defeat

In order to turn things around with her Brexit deal, Theresa May needs a domino effect. She needs to somehow get 116 MPs to change their vote from last time and back her deal. If the Prime Minister is to have any chance of passing her deal – or significantly reducing the scale of the defeat from 230 votes – May must first convince the DUP that the legally-binding concessions she has secured from Brussels are enough to stop the backstop from becoming permanent. The Attorney General’s legal advice could prove pivotal in the matter (and there are doubts in government that he will change it) – though given that Nigel Dodds is a respected legal mind, the DUP’s Westminster leader’s verdict will be just as important.

If the DUP were to get behind the changes, that would unlock more votes from Tory eurosceptics. The Brexiteers are seen to be in two groups. There are the more hardline members of the European Research Group who have assembled their own legal minds to analyse it and then there are those MPs who took No. 10 by surprise when the voted against the deal the first time. Seemingly loyal MPs like Will Quince and Sir Graham Brady are expected to move if the DUP does. The idea that the Tories would lose the support of their confidence and supply partner if they back the Brexit deal in its original form was enough to put many usually loyal MPs off.

The second group of Brexiteers – figures like Iain Duncan Smith and Jacob Rees-Mogg – will prove harder to win over. As well as DUP backing, they will want their own Brexiteer legal verdict – and here what figures like Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab do could be crucial.

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