19:29

What about the ‘meaningful vote’?

The result clearly highlights May’s essential Brexit problem. The number of rebels at 117 is eyecatchingly similar to the 100 or so MPs who were planning to vote against her Brexit deal before she postponed the vote a day before its scheduled date of Tuesday.

It is a blocking minority preventing the current deal, or anything like it, from being ratified by parliament. To win round that amount of rebels, May has to make dramatic progress in her talks with Brussels and persuade the right of her party that she can “bin the backstop”.

However, the European Union has made it repeatedly clear that the legally binding 585-page withdrawal agreement – which contains the Northern Irish backstop – is not up for renegotiation. And without renegotiation, the backstop will endure and Tory rebels will almost certainly not vote for it.

No 10 has promised that the vote will happen before 21 January, which in negotiating terms is very little time at all. So the Brexit fundamentals at Westminster remain, for now, unchanged.