This straw may not be worth grasping

How quickly things move. Back in January, in the cold and dark with the fire leaping in the stove, I was inclined, even knowing the manifest traps and pitfalls of the Selmayr-Robbins Treaty apart from the backstop, to accept in my mind Parliament agreeing the document if a binding solution to the most egregious effects of the backstop was found.

We await today two opinions. One is that of the Attorney-General, the second the group of eight lawyers in the House who will examine the scrap of paper that Mrs May has returned clutching in her hand. 

But quite apart from these assurances, things have changed since January. The EU’s malign intentions, and the effects of their scabrous Treaty, have become better understood. Even if May’s changes are green-lighted by the legal experts, we have somehow become used to the idea of a Clean Break with no WA at all, keeping most of our £39bn; business has geared for such an outcome, the people have prepared themselves, we were bracing for the end of the month. What seemed acceptable in January is now less so. This straw may not be worth grasping.

Well, we must wait and see how things play out today, but as I write I anticipate that I will be greatly disappointed should MPs accept the Selmayr-Robbins Treaty today.