Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Katie Balls,

and I'm joined by James Seif and Fraser Nelson. So we are back to another week of Brexit,

even though there's not that much in the way of House business. However, we do have a new group.

Downing Street have invited leading Brexiteers such as Steve Baker to a working

group to look at technological solutions to the Irish border. James, what does this mean?

I'll be moving towards a backstop breakthrough? I think this is Downing Street trying to keep

everybody together. On Sunday morning, Steve Baker sent out a rather angry sounding tweet saying

there's trouble ahead, suggesting that the proposals that Theresa May were outlining in the

Sunday Telegraph about the changes she would seek to the backstop were not enough, that,

you know, that for him it is the Malt House compromise or nothing. He is uncompromising about the Malt House

compromise. And I think this alternative arrangements working group,

which the important thing is they'll have kind of full access to the civil service,

is meant to show that Danny Street is serious about it

and is making a good faith effort to see whether it can work or not.

I would, though, point you to Jacob Rees-Mogg's Sun on Sunday article,

which I think is quite interesting and significant, because it shows that not all people in the ERG think as Steve Baker does, because he says in that piece, he can have basically warns that if there was to be no deal, there'd be a real danger that Brexit would either be delayed or wouldn't happen at all.

And I think this is

what we're going to see play out over the next few weeks is, you know, there'll be those people

who say it's a Mont House compromise on nothing. And there'll be other people who say, look, let's

try and get as much as we can, but let's also be aware that the parliamentary refer to it means that

this House of Commons is realistically not going to let the UK leave about a deal.

Now, Fraser, the tweet that James mentions is Steve Baker at the weekend suggesting he was unhappy with Theresa May's suggestion that something like a codicel, a side agreement could be used to fix the backstop.

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