Achieving sovereignty is the overriding goal

Theresa May is planning to visit Brussels this week for talks with the EU Commission president, Jeanclaude Juncker, about the UK’S future relationship with the bloc. There are some in her party who would rather she was no longer in a position to do so.

They have called for a vote of confidence in her leadership and invited other Tory MPS to join them. If 48 signal their wish to topple her by writing to Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, then he is required by the party rules to organise a ballot.

So far they have fallen short. But will their colleagues return from a weekend in their constituencies emboldened to join the coup, or will it be stopped in its tracks?

What Conservative MPS must ask themselves is how removing Mrs May now would change or improve matters. There could be political upheaval, the parliamentary arithmetic would remain the same, and can we be certain that a new prime minister would have more luck persuading the EU to revise the current agreement substantially?

On the other hand, sticking with Mrs May runs the risk that she will somehow get the deal through if enough MPS can be convinced that the only alternative is leaving the EU without an agreement. So her detractors have concluded that, if they want rid of the deal, they must be rid of her, too.

By deliberately running the negotiations so close to the wire, Mrs May has limited everyone’s options, including her own. The key to resolving her dilemma would be movement by the EU on the issue of the Irish backstop. Under the deal as its stands, the UK could be locked indefinitely into a set of arrangements without ever being able unilaterally to withdraw from them. No sovereign nation could accept such a provision. France wouldn’t; Germany wouldn’t. Why should the UK?

Mrs May says her trip to Brussels is intended to put flesh on the skeletal political declaration setting out the future EU/UK relationship that was published alongside the draft Withdrawal Agreement. She hopes that, if MPS appreciate a beneficial bespoke trade agreement is in prospect, they can be won over. But she also needs to persuade the EU to make it explicit in the deal that an independent nation cannot be expected to stay locked for ever into a set of arrangements over which it has no say. This is no longer about leadership; it’s about sovereignty.