Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Political Podcast. I'm Lara Prendergast and I'm joined by Katie Balls and James Forsyth.

So after a night of eating pizza, the cabinet today met and for an epic long session it seems. James, what happened?

Well, the good news for Theresa May is that the cabinet, I think, are kind of closer to agreement than most people realise.

There seems to be a sense that you need this UK-wide backstop clause to have an exit mechanism.

Now, that doesn't have to be a hard date.

I think there's a broad acceptance around the cabinet table.

The EU aren't going to agree to that.

But it has to be something that isn't in the EU's gift, that the EU can't just say, well, actually, no, you can't leave.

The bad news for Theresa May is that I don't even seeing any signs yet of the EU biting on this.

Today, Donald Tusku, is normally one of the Brexit optimists, said that there are just no grounds for optimism at the moment and that Theresa May has

to come with kind of all the owners, putting in front of put all the on her for solving this problem,

saying that she has to come with creative solutions to this problem and that, you know, it's the

Gordia not and we haven't got an annex art of the grate on us. So I think that is, that is the

problem for Theresa May May which is it's

actually not the cabinet because the cabinet are closer to agreement I think than realized.

But it's the fact that the EU is taking this attitude of well it's your job to fix this problem

not ours. Yeah I mean ahead of this meeting this meeting, I'm at the weekend, there was

lots of talk of cabinet resignations this week. Obviously, we're not even halfway through the

week, so we can't rule it out per se. But I think the fact that no big decisions have been made

means it is less likely. We know that Dominic Raab, obviously, went to Brussels on Sunday,

and the general feeling from the government

and from Theresa May is that she can't sign up to what's currently on the table on the backstop.

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