EU insiders admit they’ll grant yet another Brexit extension. Boris is lying when he says it’s his deal or nothing

Inside Westminster: The PM is ‘very confident’ MPs will back his deal but he can’t be so sure. Tory whips calculated the vote was on a knife edge when they had the DUP’s support – and now Johnson has lost them

(Reuters)

Boris Johnson frames the choice for MPs in Saturday’s momentous Commons vote on Brexit as “my deal or no deal”. He is wrong, there is a third way. If MPs reject an agreement that would do more economic harm than Theresa May’s, the UK would not crash out without a deal on 31 October.

At the Brussels summit, Mr Johnson made a rather ham-fisted attempt to persuade EU leaders to warn MPs it was “this deal or no deal” because they would not sanction a further extension of UK membership. Jean-Claude Juncker played along, saying there would be “no prolongation.” He wants the Brexit box ticked on his legacy list as he stands down as European Commission president. But his remarks irritated national leaders who took a vow of silence on an extension: by convention, the EU keeps its nose out of domestic politics.

There was also irritation in Brussels about the way the agreement got over the line. As a rules-based club, the EU likes to do things by the book. Ambassadors from member states were miffed they didn’t see the final text before national leaders signed it off and the frenzy over a done deal erupted.