Theresa May has 48 hours to nail down Brexit deal as ministers examine their consciences
With the cabinet wobbling and cries of betrayal growing, Sky News' Tamara Cohen looks at what needs to happen this week.
Monday 12 November 2018 23:33, UK
Just as Number 10 thought a Brexit withdrawal deal was about to come together, the house of cards is seriously wobbling.
Cabinet ministers, who last week had been told to stand by their mobile phones for an emergency meeting to rubber stamp the deal, are now publicly at odds over the "temporary" customs arrangement Theresa May has proposed.
Damian Hinds, the education secretary, said this weekend the UK pulling the trigger unilaterally to bring it to an end - rather than relying on the EU allowing it to - would be "very, very unlikely".
But, in the past few days, cabinet ministers Liam Fox and Andrea Leadsom have publicly said it must be a unilateral mechanism.
And other key players in cabinet have been saying so in private, although EU officials are said to have rejected Britain's proposal to have an independent arbitrator.
The customs "backstop" has for months been holding up the whole deal, with Mrs May insisting an all-UK arrangement is the only way to keep the border open on the island of Ireland without having a different regime for Northern Ireland which would imperil the union.
Meanwhile the clock is ticking.
If a special EU summit is to be called to sign off a deal in November, a deal would need to be agreed by cabinet in the next 48 hours.
"Realistically at some stage on Wednesday, is as late as it can go", a senior government source told me.
Despite the tight timescale, there is still no obvious way forward, with not only Brexiteers in cabinet examining their consciences, but former Remainers too.
Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt told cabinet colleagues last week, according to a source, that he didn't believe the current proposal - which would keep the UK in EU customs arrangements indefinitely - is one that parliament would vote for.
Even if the cabinet could be squared off without further resignations, most of them fear the arithmetic in parliament is anyway too tricky to get a deal approved, with enemies of the proposals popping up on all sides.
At least 50 Brexiteer Tories are publicly panning the prime minister's proposals, along with Mrs May's allies in the Democratic Unionist Party.
If that wasn't enough, formerly loyal Remainers have joined the phalanx, after the resignation of transport minister Jo Johnson and other ministers contemplating whether to follow him out of the door.
Why is securing a November summit, which would require cabinet agreement this week, so important?
If the timetable slips back to the next scheduled EU leaders' summit in mid-December, there is unlikely to be enough time to get it approved by parliament before the Christmas break.
MPs want to see several days of debate on the crucial political issue of our lifetime.
Delaying the debate and vote until January would, the government fears, take some of the momentum out of it, and take us perilously close to the deal deadline of 21 January which was set out in the EU Withdrawal Act.
Behind the scenes, preparations for leaving with no deal are already ramping up.
Reports on Monday suggest if the deadline slips beyond the end of this week, the government would have to commit to a chunk of spending on no-deal preparations on cross-border infrastructure to ensure vital supplies to get into the country, for which £3.5bn has been set aside.
Henry Newman, a former adviser to Michael Gove and now director of the Open Europe think tank, said: "The EU are genuinely worried that if we can't find a way through quickly and both sides turn on their no-deal preparations, that turns into a slip path to a no-deal exit, it starts to feel inevitable.
"There has to be a lead time, you can't just flick on a switch on March 29 and see a light go on; this is something civil servants have been saying consistently for months.
"It has to start kicking in now, and borders, haulage arrangements will be part of it."
A week ago, a deal looked close to fruition.
It still could be - and some in government are optimistic that ministers and MPs will accept a compromise - but the time for soul-searching is coming to an end.