Hello, my name is David Ronsman and this is Talking Politics. According to last week,

this week is meant to be the moment of truth. Is it?

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Hello, it's Catherine, the podcast producer, normally heard in ad breaks and outtakes.

Just to say that this extra episode was recorded a few hours before the speaker of the

House, John Burko, made his surprise ruling that the expected third meaningful vote on

Theresa May's deal can't go ahead if it remains substantially the same.

As the situation unfolds over the next day or so, we'll do our best, of course, to add

to episodes already planned. But as always, we'd like to take a breath and have a think

before gathering the team to record.

For once, it is not Wednesday morning, it is Monday lunchtime and I'm here with Helen

Thompson. Part of the reason we're doing this is Helen's not around later this week

when we would normally touch base with her and find out what we think is really going

on. We also recorded last week's one after the first of the sequence of votes, motions

and amendments and I wanted to catch up with Helen just to get a sense of where we are

now because we weren't here from her for a while. Of course, we don't know where we are

any more than we normally do. But there is something slightly different about doing this

on a Monday than a Wednesday as we normally do. Because what seems to have happened, and

maybe this is a pattern that repeats itself, is that the end of last week, it looked like

...