Welcome to Coffee House Shots of Spectators' Daily Politics Podcast. So it's Tuesday, 48 hours until the Valentine's Day massacre, as the various amendments in the House of Commons on Brexit might have been known. But the ground seems to be moving. I'm Fraser Nelson, I'm joined by James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman to discuss. So, James,

is this yet another crunch day that's going to slip? So we had a statement from Theresa May

in House Commons on Brexit today, and then it was going to more heat than light in the statement.

But what she did commit herself to is that if there's no deal has been, if no agreement between the UK

and the EU has been reached by the end of the February, she'll bring another motion to the

comments that can be amended. So the end of this month, so she's giving yourself another two weeks.

Another two weeks, yeah. But what she's also really doing is she's saying to her, those ministers

of hers who are most worried about no deal, you don't need to resign on

Thursday to vote for the Cooper Amendment because you can resign two weeks from now.

Now, the question is this, are these kind of frogs being boiled in the water?

In two weeks time, is she going to turn around and say to them, I can almost smell a concession

coming from the EU. I was at the summit in Shamel Sheikh and lots of people

took me aside in the margins and said, oh, we're getting ready to help you. So Parliament just

give me a bit more time. The question becomes ultimately, army's ministers, nearly all are what you

might call kind of men of government types, people who believe that they need to stay in government to keep the machine working.

Are they really ever going to be prepared to resign or not? That is the question. And I think there is also another strategic dilemma for Theresa May here because she's trying to do two things. On the one hand, she needs Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Gork to be confident that Theresa May is never going to do no deal.

So they don't need to resign because she's never going to go down that path.

But on the other hand, she needs to credibly persuade the EU that if they don't give her something on the backstop, she is prepared to do no deal.

So she is having to do this kind of Janus-faced thing or saying to her,

remain a minister's, don't worry, I'm not going to do no deal while saying to the EU,

look, you know, I don't want to, but I will do no deal if you won't give me anything like

Parliament would make me do no deal.

...