Outwitted by EU

the DUP nor Eurosceptics would countenance the EU’s offering, the Government published its own proposal for the backstop – a “temporary customs arrangement” for the whole of the UK.

Following pressure from Mr Davis, the document said that the temporary customs arrangement “should be time limited, and that it will be only in place until the future customs arrangement can be introduced…”

Despite the December report’s UKwide phrasing, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, responded that “our backstop cannot be extended to the whole of the UK.” He added: “The time-limited term does not work for us.” In July, Mrs May published her Chequers proposals for a future relationship with the EU, which, by committing the UK to following EU rules on the production of goods, were intended to help avoid a hard border.

But only last month EU negotiators were said to have rejected a role for the Stormont assembly in consenting to any unique treatment of Northern Ireland – a role that had been set out in the December agreement. And they have maintained Mr Barnier’s refusal to put a limit on the backstop.

Following the eleventh-hour intervention of Cabinet ministers this month, a version of the backstop without any time limit was wrestled back from the hands of officials at the negotiating table, and is now being reworked.

Henry Newman, the director of Open Europe, a think-tank, said: “It calls into question the EU’s good faith in these negotiations when they seem willing to abrogate parts of the joint report which they don’t like, while insisting on the parts that they do.

“The only way through this impasse on the backstop is a protocol which reflects both elements of the December report – the commitments to avoiding a hard border, but also to respecting the constitutional integrity and order of the United Kingdom.” One such furious campaigner was Jane Franklin, who was at the march with her friends from the Women’s Equality Party. “I’m furious,” she said, “that my children won’t have the freedoms I had to work and travel in Europe,” adding that Brexit would benefit only the “Jacob Rees-Moggs of this world who have a nanny to look after his children and have never changed a nappy”.

Perhaps having heard her criticism, Rees-Mogg himself weighed in on the melee later in the day, sharing a photo of a banner which branded the protesters “elitist losers”. He wrote: “We have already had a People’s vote. The People voted to Leave.” He seems to have missed the memo that it is not actual votes that make a democracy any longer, but optimistic crowd counting.