Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shops, The Spectator's Daily Political Podcast. I'm

now a Prendergast and I'm today joined by Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. So James, can you

tell us about this No Deal Amendment that people are talking about today? So if this No Deal

Amendment looks like it has enough support to pass, I think the government are considering whether to fight it or not.

There is a view inside government that it doesn't actually, I was talking to the minister last night,

and their view was it doesn't actually restrict their ability to do that much. I think this is a lot of

what we're going to see in this shadow boxing between Parliament and the executive over trying to stop no deal,

which is Parliament can do lots of things that inconvenience the executive that make it more difficult to plan for no deal.

But in terms of actually stopping it, their options are really quite basic. They can essentially

deny the government's supply

or they can deny it confidence. One of the reasons about Cooper's been able to assemble such a kind

of big coalition for her amendment is that it doesn't do either of those things. And so ultimately

the question comes down to it, this, which is when it comes to no deal, are enough MPs prepared to no confidence the government

to bring in a new government determined not to do no deal or not? If that is where Theresa May

goes, if her deal doesn't look like passing. I mean, that is the kind of essential question.

But James, why are the ministers relaxed? I mean, what, for example,

would this do? So it would make it more difficult to tidy up bits of a tax code related to

no deal, for example. But the view is that in the general scheme of things, in the, in the, of no

deal, this is an inconvenience rather than a crippling blow.

But I think if you look at what Nick Bowles have said today, you know, these rebels will, they'll continue to do all of these things.

And at the moment, these are insect bites in that they are annoying to the government rather than, well, I suppose an insect bite could be fatal if you were unlucky.

But rather than... I can kill you at the wrong mistake.

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