Former Farming Minister George Eustice has laid into grandstanding Remain ministers for flaunting resignation threats around in the press, after his own principled resignation yesterday. Speaking to TalkRadio, he attacked them for “trying to buffet the Prime Minister around through threats of resignation”, adding “that’s no way to behave as a minister”. Cabinet Ministers who have happily sat in Government on a “no deal is better than a bad deal” platform for two years now publicly blackmailing the PM into reversing that policy is a truly shameful spectacle…

Eustice privately made his case to the Prime Minister and then simply submitted his resignation when he felt he could no longer continue. Without any highly embarrassing Richard Harrington-style media antics in advance…

Nissan’s decision not to begin production of a new model of car in Sunderland dominated the media at the start of the week, despite no jobs actually being lost. Brexit naturally got all the blame, despite a large number of other significant factors including falling demand for diesel cars and the EU’s stringent new emissions standards in the wake of Germany’s major diesel fraud scandal. If it was really a Brexit issue why didn’t Nissan just move production to one of their many manufacturing plants in Spain, or France where they have a strategic partnership with Renault?

Funny how quiet the media was when another Japanese car giant did start a major new production line – just last month Toyota commenced production of the new 2019 Corolla at its Burnaston plant in Derbyshire where over 3000 people are employed. The Corolla is not a niche SUV like the Nissan X-Trail, it is the best-selling car model in the world…

In fact the only mention of the new Corolla on BBC News was a single line in an article puffing up the latest round of no-deal bluster from the firm’s European boss and Greg Clark, which didn’t even mention the fact that new production had started. Not a word from Project Fear cheerleaders Sky News…

Remainer Cabinet ministers are not even bothering to wait for Theresa May to be defeated in the meaningful vote next week before putting forward their Brexit ‘Plan B’ ideas. Heavily Remain-leaning Business Secretary Greg Clark has broken ranks to come out and call for ‘no deal’ to be taken off the table and for the Government to pivot towards a softer Brexit to get the deal through with Labour support, neither of which are Government policy. Yet.

Clark doubled down on Today, pointedly saying that “not just the Government, but the whole of Parliament” would work out the “shaping of the final deal”. He is not alone, Lidington, Gauke and Rudd have also made their opposition to ‘no deal’ explicit. The question for Brexiteers is to what extent they are outliers or actually represent mainstream Cabinet thinking. Or even the view of Number 10…

While Downing Street has still not taken ‘no deal’ off the table publicly, privately they are extremely adverse to allowing ‘no deal’ to happen. For now their Plan A is still to get enough Tory and DUP MPs back on board to eventually get May’s deal through. If this proves to be impossible, Plan B will not be to press ahead with ‘no deal’ but to seek support from the Labour benches instead by softening up the deal further, think customs union and much more of this. Bercow’s willingness to play fast and loose with Parliamentary procedure opens the door to worse…

Brexiteers are right in their criticisms of the deal but they have a much bigger fight on their hands in trying to force ‘no deal’ in whatever happens next than many realise. How far will an unholy alliance of Downing Street and Cabinet Remainers with Labour’s Remainer MPs be prepared to go to force through a Brexit-in-name-only rather than allow ‘no deal’ to happen?

“Any reasonable person would have to be guided by the facts and the evidence” on the #Brexit transition period says Business Secretary @GregClarkMP #Ridge pic.twitter.com/iKi2nMrbdH

— Ridge on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) 1 July 2018

More posturing from chief Cabinet remoaner Greg Clark as he suggests extending the transition period:

“You need to be aware of the technical requirements and respect them… when it comes to putting in place the arrangements for our permanent relationship we have to be guided by the evidence.”

They never want us to leave…