Theresa May isolated and besieged on all sides
The Prime Minister is criticised by Leavers and Remainers with time running out to come up with a Brexit deal.
Tuesday 16 October 2018 11:43, UK
As the Prime minister launched a strategy to combat an epidemic of loneliness in society, it was difficult not to think about her own isolation.
The Brexit process has proven a rather friendless endeavour so far and won't get much more welcoming in the near future.
At the weekend Michel Barnier put back on the table unacceptable conditions for the maintenance of an open Irish border - the so-called backstop to the backstop that keeps Northern Ireland in the customs union and in elements of the single market, rejected in person by the Brexit Secretary on Sunday.
That means no deal for now. But that also means Brexiter Cabinet ministers don't have a deal over which to rebel or resign just yet.
Penny Mordaunt is routinely identified by European Research Group members as someone on the verge of resignation, and yet, on her doorstep in the morning she was the picture of loyalty to her PM, urging everyone to "calm down".
No plotting over pizza or any other foodstuff from this quarter.
But Brexit whack-a-mole never stops - in fudging the deal this weekend and avoiding Cabinet resignations tomorrow, a Parliamentary chasm opened before her eyes when she decided to update the Commons.
Jeremy Corbyn lambasting "groundhog day" from a PM heading for what he called a blindfold Brexit (incidentally this is the terminology being used by the People's Vote campaign and the first minister of Scotland) is to be expected.
He also asked the PM to stand aside for someone who can do a deal and reject their "false choice" of "her deal or no deal".
The PM's problems in the chamber though, were many and varied. Nigel Dodds the DUP's leader in the Commons asking her to rule out something that is being negotiated - some extra single market regulatory checks after Brexit as part of the backstop.
She did not firmly rule that out, at least on a UK-wide basis. Dodds shook his head looking distinctly unimpressed, alongside a succession of Brexiter MPs from Boris Johnson to Jacob Rees-Mogg launching hostile questions.
None got a clear answer on the idea that any ongoing customs union arrangement would be given a firm end date.
She cannot because it is this that will justify in the EU's mind the Northern Ireland specific backstop that enrages the DUP.
But even if that was solved, from a different quarter of the chamber came the former Attorney General Dominic Grieve attacking her from the diametrically opposite direction, vowing to vote down the deal unless it was put back to the people, because it was nothing like the deal promised to people during the referendum.
This was significant. Grieve, the Remainer rebel commander had called off his June customs union offensive to give the PM an opportunity to land her Chequers deal.
No quarter given by him now. And there was what seemed like a concerted effort from at least a dozen others asking versions of the same question about a so-called "people's vote". The PM batted away the questions with the same line about having had a peoples vote already in 2016.
A ministerial source told me that the most they can now expect from the EU summit in Brussels this week is that they wont rule out a November special deal summit.
They have given up on Barnier advising that there has been progress on the backstop substantial enough to merit a deal summit.
But the PM has been invited to address the EU27 at dinner in Brussels on Wednesday, she will need many more friends than last time in Salzburg.