What does the PM have to offer in her ‘improved’ Brexit plan?

Politics Explained: The prime mInister’s room for manoeuvre is constrained by Brussels’ unwillingness to reopen the deal struck last November

After seeing her Brexit deal resoundingly rejected by MPs in three meaningful votes, Theresa May is promising an “improved” package of measures in a “bold new offer” to be put before the Commons in the first week of June.

But in reality, her room for manoeuvre is tightly circumscribed.

Any move away from the withdrawal agreement struck in November with Brussels – and approved by the leaders of the 27 remaining member states – would mean the EU refusing to ratify the deal, at least unless the changes were agreed in a fresh round of negotiations.

To say there is no appetite in Brussels for more talks on divorce terms would be an understatement. Officials including chief negotiator Michel Barnier have repeatedly insisted they will not reopen the deal unless there is a fundamental change to the UK’s “red lines”.

Changing the red lines – departure from the single market and customs union, an end to free movement, removal of the UK from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice – would cause apoplexy in the Conservative Party, many of whose members are already planning to vote for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in Thursday’s European elections.

So Ms May’s options to improve the withdrawal agreement bill look set to be limited to measures which can be enacted through domestic legislation or aspirations which do not alter the fundamentals of the Brexit deal.

On the ferociously debated “backstop” for Northern Ireland, the government is likely to make earnest assurances that it will work with vigour and determination to find a technological solution to allowing truckloads of cargo to pass between two customs territories with no physical checks or delays.

No existing system has been put forward that would do the job to the satisfaction of Brussels, London and Dublin, but the message will be that if enough money and brainpower can be directed at the problem – and the government has already devoted £20m to finding this holy grail of Brexit – then surely we can come up with something by the end of December 2020, when the backstop will otherwise come into effect.

Which may be true. But if no such solution turns up, then the backstop will still be there in the deal. And that brutal fact looks likely to mean Ms May’s DUP allies remaining unswayed by her “bold” new approach, even if they are also promised a role for the Northern Ireland Assembly – if and when it is ever reconstituted – in decision-making on border arrangements.

Equally, there are likely to be domestic measures on offer to allow future parliaments to match whatever workplace and environmental safeguards are introduced by Brussels. But without the customs union which Labour has made its goal, and without “dynamic” alignment which would mean protections automatically being copied over, these seem unlikely to tempt too many of Jeremy Corbyn’s MPs to back the PM’s bill.

Ms May’s cabinet will put the final touches to the bill on Tuesday, but MPs are unlikely to see it until the start of June. It seems the government are wary of allowing them to take it back to their constituencies for a savaging by activists during the inconveniently timed Whitsun recess.

No doubt the PM is hoping the bill will prove the get-out-of-jail card which allows her to leave office with the legacy of an orderly exit from the EU. But as things stand, it seems as likely to close the door on her hopes of ever finding a way out of the trap her stance has left her in.