Robert Pestons analysis:
Now it is with that very last concession that the PM is taking the political risk of her life, because in that concession she is in effect saying that a trade deal for the whole UK will also be based on a promise of close regulatory alignment between our country and the EU, in perpetuity.
That permanent regulatory convergence between the UK and EU is her preferred route, because without it her government would collapse: Northern Ireland’s DUP MPs, which are sustaining the Tories in office, have made it crystal clear that they will not accept a separate regulatory set-up for Northern Ireland from that prevailing in the UK as a whole.
But here is what I assume will be scaring the PM witless (it scares me, just as a bystander). She is signing up for close regulatory alignment between the UK and EU without ever having secured agreement for that from the cabinet.
And for Johnson, Gove and most of the other more ardent Brexiteers, in and out of the Cabinet, almost the whole point of leaving the EU was for the UK to “take back control” of setting rules and regulations for British businesses.
If her own cabinet and backbench colleagues end up vetoing that offer, even if it is accepted by Juncker at today’s lunch, that would see the UK having no trade deal with the EU and being forced to reintroduce a peace-disrupting hard border with the Republic.
And in breaking news…..
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s statement of #Brexit has been postponed
This is all going great, isn’t it?