Theresa May loses another battle – but she may be zigzagging towards winning the Brexit war

The assumption must be that May was persuaded to tack towards her soft-Brexit wing by a group of ministers who are threatening to resign if the government heads towards a no-deal exit. Inevitably, by trying to keep those ministers on board, she lost about 50 Eurosceptic MPs off the other side of the seesaw. But this is important because it contradicts the usual Labour allegation that May is a prisoner of her hard-Brexit backbenchers and always gives in to them. This time, she went the other way and lost the vote as a result.