A fraught morning in Westminster with legal advice that changed ... nothing

‘I am quite clear in my own mind that it doesn’t allow the UK to exit unilaterally’

‘It’s a bit like someone reading their home contents insurance and saying ‘this is what I think it means’’

The morning started with Geoffrey Cox tweeting the word “bollocks” and by lunchtime we were starting to get a sense of what the sonorous Attorney General might have meant. His 9am outburst was directed at Jon Snow, the Channel 4 News anchor, for suggesting the eminent QC had said no to the validity of Mrs May’s new EU deal and had been told to go away and find a way to say yes.

Two hours later it transpired the £800-an-hour lawyer was certainly not for turning, publishing legal advice that appeared to kill the Withdrawal Agreement stone dead.

The 11am publication of the killer document – the Legal Opinion on Joint Instrument and Unilateral Declaration concerning the Withdrawal Agreement – came as Stephen Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, was being grilled by Hilary Benn, the chairman of the Brexit select committee.

Asked if the UK can unilaterally pull out of the backstop under the revised Brexit deal, Mr Barclay’s affirmative reply appeared at odds with Mr Cox’s assertion that “the legal risk remains unchanged”. The fatal line came in paragraph 19 where the barrister added, for good measure, that the UK would have “no unilateral means of exiting the Protocol’s arrangements.” Clearly when he said last week that he cared more about his legal reputation than his political career, he meant it.

It later transpired that the multimillionaire silk was “furious” to have been cut out of the negotiations at the last minute and “flabbergasted” that Mrs May’s de facto deputy gave a late night Commons statement promising “legally binding” changes without bothering to check with the Attorney General first.

While Downing Street was briefing journalists to take the advice “in its entirety”, Brexiteers were naturally doing nothing of the sort.

Jacob Rees-mogg described it as a “day of reckoning” before evoking a 13th century requiem by tweeting the Latin phrase: “Dies irae, dies illa”.

Roughly translated as “the day of wrath, that day will dissolve the world in ashes”, it appeared ominous, though he later clarified that the requiem “goes on to talk of salvation”.

If that was to be found anywhere, it certainly was not on Radio 4’s Today, despite Michael Gove’s best efforts. The Environment Secretary even tried to liken Mrs May’s Brexit deal to Manchester United’s Champions League comeback against Paris Saint-germain last week.

One wonders how he and Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, who also took to the airwaves insisting the changes secured in Strasbourg were “legally binding”, felt once Mr Cox confirmed the opposite to be true. Less back of the net and more own goal.

Dominic Grieve, his predecessor as attorney general, appeared to share his fellow lawyer’s concerns, saying: “I am quite clear in my own mind it doesn’t allow the UK to exit unilaterally.”

Not surprisingly, Sir Keir Starmer – also a QC and a former director of public prosecutions – did not think much of the changes either, telling the BBC: “It’s a bit like someone reading their home contents insurance and saying ‘This is what I think it means’.

“If the other side doesn’t agree, it doesn’t mean anything.” Reacting to Mr Cox’s advice he later tweeted: “The Government’s strategy is now in tatters.” Ouch. Other Rumpoles dumping on the deal included David Anderson QC, the former terror watchdog and Jason Coppel QC, who represented the Government in Gina Miller’s Article 50 case.

In Strasbourg, Jean-claude Juncker, president of the EU Commission, appeared refreshed after his late-

‘We were hoping you would pull a rabbit out of the hat – you’ve managed a hamster’

‘Risks remain that the UK would be unable to lawfully exit the backstop were it to be activated’

nighter with the PM. “Allow me to tell you a little secret,” he told reporters. “I didn’t sleep much because of Mrs May last night.” What is it about the former prime minister of Luxembourg’s ability to make men and women wince in equal measure? If kissing Mrs May on the hand wasn’t creepy enough.

His warning that the Withdrawal Agreement would not be reopened a third time came after Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s taoiseach, repeated that the extra layers were “complementary” to the deal and not a complete rewrite.

The DUP’S Sammy Wilson described his mood as “gloomy” and said Mrs May “did not look last night like someone who has brought back a triumph”. Another DUP source said they did not see how the party could support the deal. Game over, it would seem. No wonder Cabinet sources sounded so pessimistic ahead of their meeting at Number 10 yesterday morning, which ran on for a good 45 minutes while Mr Cox delivered his bombshell. Quite how they felt afterwards is anyone’s guess but few could disagree with Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader, overheard in a Strasbourg corridor saying of the deal: “I think it falls.”

As sterling started to dive back to $1.30, another Cabinet minister was described as being “in despair”, although Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, put on a brave face on Twitter, insisting there was “Strong Cabinet backing for the PM’S deal – with new legal force,” while Amber Rudd, the Work and Pensions Secretary, went so far as to suggest the PM could still win the vote.

Meanwhile, Mrs May had to attend a meeting of the 1922 Committee of backbenchers, where she was told by Mark Pritchard, MP for The Wrekin in Shropshire: “We were hoping you would pull a rabbit out of the hat – you’ve managed a hamster.”

On the plus side, he confirmed he would still vote for the deal.

Would other MPS follow, cowed by the chaos and confusion of a no-deal Brexit – or no Brexit at all?

According to Tory MP George Freeman, there was the “collective sound of pennies dropping” in the meeting and a “big migration of wildebeests” toward the deal.

Mrs May was applauded when she declared: “No one wants another general election,” proving perhaps that our elected elite are not totally out of touch with the British public, after all.

By time the Attorney General took to the Dispatch Box, he was back to talking with Shakespearean aplomb. “The matters of law affecting withdrawal can only inform what is essentially a political decision that each of us must make,” he boomed.

“This is a question not of the lawfulness of the Government’s action but of the prudence as a matter of policy and political judgment of entering into an international agreement on the terms proposed.”

It was not enough to convince the so-called Brexit star chamber of lawyers led by veteran Tory MP Sir Bill Cash, whose analysis concluded the changes were not legally binding and did not provide the UK with a credible exit mechanism to the backstop.

Concluding they “fail to fulfil the commitment made to the House in response to the Brady amendment ‘to obtain legally binding changes to the Withdrawal Agreement’,” they questioned the suggestion that “bad faith” by the EU could provide a legal route out for the UK and claimed that arbitration “would not enable the UK to exit the backstop”.

Nigel Dodds, DUP deputy leader and a former lawyer among those studying the fine print, was clearly unimpressed – a spokesman said that the party did not think “sufficient progress” had been made in Strasbourg. “Risks remain that the UK would be unable to lawfully exit the backstop were it to be activated,” he said, calling on the “intransigent” EU to be “reasonable”. Back to the drawing board, then? During the course of a fraught morning in Westminster, the legal advice appeared to change everything – and nothing.