Good morning and welcome to Politics Live on what could be a fairly momentous day. I’ll be keeping the blog warm for a bit before Andy Sparrow takes over, thanks for following along.
Here’s where we are:
An emergency cabinet meeting will be held this afternoon at 2pm, which sources have said is expected to last three hours. Cabinet ministers will debate the draft of an agreement to withdraw from the EU that has finally been reached after torturous negotiations, more than two years after the UK voted to leave the European Union.
Yesterday, May called in her ministers to Number 10, one by one, for briefings on the agreement, in what is being seen as a divide-and-conquer strategy and ministers were supposed to study the draft text, particularly the provisions around the Irish border, overnight.
Getting this past cabinet is the first hurdle for May. If May secures the support of her colleagues during this meeting, she will then launch a campaign to sell the deal to the country, beginning with a live televised media conference.
Given that May sometimes struggles as a performer, some have suggested a live conference is not necessarily the best way to sell the agreement to a disillusioned populace.
If the cabinet approves the plan, the EU expects to hold a special Brexit summit on 25 November. May then takes the deal to parliament, most likely in mid-December.
If they don’t approve it, the UK careers closer to a “no-deal” Brexit, potentially leaving the EU without any agreement reached on important issues such as trade, the status of EU citizens in the UK or UK citizens in the EU.