Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Laura Prendergars and I'm today joined by James Forsyth and Katie Balls.

So James May is going to have to head back to Brussels to renegotiate the backstop.

I mean, do you think there's anything she can get from them?

I don't think she's going to get anything from them straight away. I think that they are

essentially waiting to see what happens in Parliament before they take a decision. If it looks

like Parliament is going to step in and force the government to extend Article 50, the kind of

so-called Cooper Amendment, if there's no deal reach, then I think that she's not going to get very much.

But if there's a sense that if Cooper 2 fails on Valentine's Day, then I think you might get something, because there might be a sense of, are we really going to have this whole thing fall over over this?

You know, there might be more openness to UK ideas about time limits, exit mechanisms, all that kind of stuff.

So I think that, I think the kind of question is to get something, she needs to be, she needs to, to, for no deal to remain an option.

Because if no deal appears to be disappearing as an option

then i think the EU will just say well look we'll sit tight but if there is a chance of there

been a this all ending up in a no deal scenario then i think to avoid the kind of short-term

disruption that that would cause and to avoid the risk of the UK going off becoming a completely different kind of economy after Brexit,

then I think they would be prepared.

They're not going to junk the entire backstop, but they might be prepared to tweak it, to change it,

in a way that might make it acceptable enough to get it through the comments.

So, Katie, what are we expecting to see happen over the next few days?

I think Theresa May is going to try and look very busy as per usual and as though negotiations

are happening, even if the EU say that they're not in the mood for renegotiation on the redrawing agreement.

But we are a slightly strange situation where I think the EU wants the ideas from Theresa May as to

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