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

I'm John Connolly, an assistant digital editor of The Spectator, standing in for Lara Prendergast.

I'm joined by James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson.

Theresa May has been in Brussels today to meet Juncker and EU leaders.

Has she made any success on the backstop?

Well, I think she has got somewhere, not that far, but she has got somewhere in that

it has been agreed that her and Juncker will meet again before the end of the month and that

the UK and EU negotiators are going to start talking again.

Now, the EU is still adamantly saying that there's no prospect of all of reopening the

withdrawal agreement that that's not going to happen.

But the fact that negotiators are speaking again does suggest that there is some possibility of some movement somewhere.

What I think we've seen over the last few days is when Donald Tuscalamalia's hell comments yesterday,

they basically were an obvious distraction technique because you basically create this massive row about something

it lowers expectations for May's visit and it also means that people don't really notice the fact that these

talks have started up again they just hear the rhetoric so i think that Theresa May will be relieved

that she's coming back from Brussels with something. She's not

actually arrived and had the door slammed in her face. She's actually been told the

negotiations can start talking again, come back at the end of the month. I personally think

we're still in a position where we're not going to see any movement until the EU sees what

happens when the Cooper Amendment returns to a comments on Valentine's Day. If that is defeated again, then I think that the pressure within the EU

to come to some kind of accommodation will increase a bit.

However, if Cooper passes, then I think the EU will take the view that it can just sit tight

...