Austin leaves the Labour Party, but doesn’t join the Independent Group

He’s a Brownite of Brownites with a Leave-voting seat – and one of Corbyn’s main critics. Which explains why he’s going and what he’s doing.

Iain Dale: Welcome to the Monster Raving Soubry Party

Plus: In news elsewhere, a luxury women’s health spa in Belgravia – with annual membership fees of £5,500 – this week blamed Brexit for its closure.

The defectors are wrong. The Conservatives aren’t shifting to the right. They are mired in the mixed middle.

No less than the ERG, the group of three sees everything through the prism of Brexit – which, let it not be forgotten, they voted to support themselves.

Sad necessity. Three Conservative MPs resign the whip to sit alongside the Independent Group

We regret the Party being less broad a tent than it did this morning. But the position of these MPs had become impossible – and intolerable.

WATCH: Clark – Brexit is a factor in slowing investment

Though he also tells Suella Braverman during a statement on Honda that he “respects the reasons for the decision that have been given”.

James Frayne: What impact will the Independent Group have on the Conservative Party?

The long and short of it is: it ought to damage Labour more, but there are dangers for the Tories none the less.

Iain Mansfield: We have nothing to fear from No Deal

It would bring with it many compensations, including regulatory freedom, tariff income and £39 billion of cold, hard cash.

“History will judge us all.” May’s letter to Tory MPs: full text

The Prime Minister pleads for support – and says that Cox will be making a major speech on the backstop this week.

Fabio Conti: A plea for Conservative unity in these fractious times – and how we must plan for the challenges of the future

It is rarely Brexit that people raise on the doorstep. It is concerns about the NHS; their local school; the difficulties faced by social care, or the rise in violent crime.

Why did the Government craft its own defeat yesterday evening?

Perhaps we will find out today why Downing Street and the whips stuck with a motion that risked revolt by ERG members and second referendum backers alike.

May’s new Brexit hell. An alliance of hard and soft Brexiteers humiliates her. And any sense of progress is lost.

Her motion is defeated. Will the EU now abandon her, and egg on Letwin and his supporters to try to take formal control of the negotiation?

Nearly a quarter of Conservative MPs failed to support the Prime Minister yesterday

A mass of ERG and other hard Brexiteers band together with a liberal sprinkling of Remainers.

Trust

Robbins’ overheard conversation has further eroded faith in his boss – and the ERG is itself divided over whether changes to the backstop would themselves be enough.

The most pro-intervention speech by a Defence Secretary since the Iraq War

Is the Treasury up for funding and voters up for supporting the ideas he sketched out ealier this week?

What does the EU want?

Rather than collude with MPs to take power out of May’s hands, it is colluding with her in keeping it there – presumably with the aim of a last-minute backstop offer.