Theresa May is standing firm on Brexit – but everyone at the Tory conference knows that her plan has failed

The Conservative Party conference is a holding operation, and yet another survival course for Theresa May. To say that it is badly timed for her is a massive understatement. By now, she should have been closing in on a deal with the EU, and could have tried to sell it to the Tory activists who have come to Birmingham.

But after her mauling by the EU27 at last month’s Salzburg summit, May is left trying to breathe life into the dead duck of her Chequers plan. She knows the next act in the Brexit drama will have to be some movement by her towards the EU’s position. Behind the scenes, such proposals are being quietly drawn up. But the prime minister cannot risk being open about them at the Tory conference. Any concessions would fuel the “betrayal” narrative being advanced by Boris Johnson, as he exploits her difficulties to advance his own prospects of succeeding her.

With no EU agreement in sight, ministers fill the vacuum by pleading for Tory unity, making predictable attacks on Labour and bashing the EU, which of course all plays well with Tory members. May will play the immigration card in her speech to the conference on Wednesday.

But listen closely to ministers in their speeches and media interviews, and you do not find a full-throated defence of Chequers. Jeremy Hunt and Dominic Raab, two ministers with a close interest in Brexit, did not even mention the C-word in their conference address. No coincidence that they too are possible leadership contenders. Why give yourself a black mark in a beauty contest? The only people who bang on about Chequers are the eurosceptics who want to “chuck” it.

Although Philip Hammond did back Chequers in his conference speech today, other ministers defend May without defending her blueprint. The cabinet will not rock May’s boat during the conference. But ministers tell me they will demand that she comes up with a plan b before the EU’s next summit on 18-19 October. Like the EU27, they are worried that May’s strategy could result in an accidental no deal exit next March because time is now running so short. (That’s why EU leaders suddenly changed tack in Salzburg and decided to give May a 10,000-volt shock).

Ministers say privately there is “zero appetite” in the cabinet for crashing out without a deal. At one level, that is mildly reassuring. At another, it is worrying, since ministers have probably seen more scary forecasts of what a cliff-edge departure would mean than they have so far revealed in the government’s “technical notices.”

Brexiteer ministers fear lack of time might leave the UK facing a choice between a no deal exit and the “port in a storm” of temporary membership of the European Economic Area (EEA) – the so-called Norway option. That is why Raab, the Brexit secretary, told the conference today that if the EU tries to “lock us in via the back door of the EEA or customs union”, the UK will have no choice but to leave with no deal.

Brexiteer ministers want to push May towards a Canada-EU style free trade deal. But she does not believe that would offer the frictionless trade needed by business and to solve the Irish border conundrum. I suspect she will have to come up with a reworked version of Chequers to head off the looming cabinet clash. To draw the EU into serious negotiations, she will probably produce what she will call a “customs partnership” or “customs arrangement”, but to her Tory critics will look like “a customs union” even if it is not quite the same as the existing EU one. May’s problem here is that she rashly ruled out “a customs union” during a previous bout of europhobia.

To secure her main prize of frictionless trade, the prime minister might also have to allay EU fears that Brexit Britain would undercut the EU on social, labour and environmental rules, by signing up to future EU regulation in these areas. Another red rag to Johnson and the other eurosceptic bulls. While May would promise that parliament could review and change such commitments, it would be a hard sell to her party.

She will try to salvage something from the Salzburg wreckage. Her new plan might be billed as “building on Chequers” or “Chequers 2” and she could claim that “Chequers 1” had at least unblocked the negotiations.

No doubt May will deny she is “chucking Chequers.” After all, this is the leader who declared that “nothing has changed” when she U-turned on her social care plans during last year’s election campaign. But Chequers will change. If she doesn’t change it, the cabinet will.