Hour by hour, a day of anger, disappointment and humiliation

THERESA May didn’t get much sleep on Monday night. After her last- ditch dash to Strasbourg to secure new Brexit concessions, she wasn’t back in Downing Street until 2am yesterday. And she wasn’t the only one in Westminster up for much of the night.

Attorney General Geoffrey Cox was writing his legal advice – the critical document that would decide the fate of Mrs May’s renegotiation – finishing about 5am.

Also up were several members of the European Research Group’s ‘ star chamber’ of Eurosceptic lawyers, picking over the Government’s new legal texts and preparing to offer their own determination.

By the time the rest of the country woke up, there were reasons for cautious optimism in No 10.

MPs who were previously implacably opposed to the deal were not – yet – dismissing the new concessions. Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said he wanted to give the deal a ‘ fair wind’. Former Brexit secretary David Davis also left open the prospect that he might vote for it.

Mr Cox’s only public statement was a single-word expletive on Twitter, issued in response to Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow claiming that the Attorney General had been told to rewrite his legal advice and summoned a ‘cohort of lawyers’.

His advice was handed to Mrs May and her officials just before the Cabinet meeting, which began at 9.30am.

But if the Prime Minister was hoping Mr Cox would put her political needs ahead of his narrow legal duties, she was to be greatly disappointed. The three-page document did grave damage to Mrs May’s hopes of winning the day. The killer final section, paragraph 19, concluded that the legal risk of the UK being trapped in the Northern Ireland backstop without means of escape ‘remains unchanged’. Any hopes Mr Cox might finesse his language, and leave room for interpretation, were cruelly dashed.

Ministers were furious. One Cabinet source said it was ‘as bad as it could possibly be’. Another was more blunt: ‘He has completely f***** us.’

One Whitehall source, reaching for a football metaphor, said Mr Cox had ‘gone in twofooted, studs up’. Reports from Brussels yesterday raised questions about Mr Cox’s competence, saying he had offended EU negotiators last week – at one point addressing a senior EU official, Sabine Weyand, as ‘my dear’.

At 11.30am, Mrs May appeared before the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers.

Suffering from a cold for two days, her voice – which had shown signs of breaking at her Monday night Press conference with Jean-Claude Juncker – was failing her. She faced question after question after question about paragraph 19. Mark Francois, the pugilistic deputy chairman of the European Research Group, said he found her answers ‘wholly unconvincing’.

At 12.30pm, Mr Cox stood up in the Commons, and while making some attempt to make clear this was ultimately a ‘political decision’, could not hide from his own conclusions. Yes, there were ‘substantive and binding changes’ to the deal. But ‘there is no ultimate unilateral right out of this arrangement. The risk of that continues.’

The mood on the Tory benches was bleak. ERG leader Jacob Rees- Mogg tweeted: ‘Dies irae, dies illa’, which is Latin for ‘day of wrath and doom impending’. The weather reflected the mood. A dark thunderstorm formed over the Palace of Westminster, and the heavens opened.

Then came the inevitable bad news from the ERG ‘star chamber’. Members of the eightstrong panel, which included former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab and the DUP’s Nigel Dodds, said Mrs May’s concessions ‘do not meet’ the Government’s own tests for what it sought to secure.

At 2pm, Mrs May entered the Commons chamber. Then another blow. The DUP said it would not back the deal.

Boris Johnson dismissed it with contempt: ‘The result is like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden – they have sewed an apron of fig leaves that does nothing to conceal the embarrassment and indignity of the UK.’

At 7pm in the division lobbies, tempers flared. One Cabinet minister was overheard saying they could ‘f****** spit’ on MPs voting down the deal. The outcome was another colossal defeat, by 149 votes.

As Mrs May addressed the Commons, expressing her ‘profound regret’ about the outcome, and warning of ‘unenviable choices’ ahead, her voice faltered so much she could barely be heard.

‘As bad as it could be’ ‘An apron of fig leaves’