COULD Theresa May be about to postpone the third meaningful vote on her Brexit deal?

Yesterday, Liam Fox, her international trade secretary said there would be “no point” holding the vote, known as MV3, unless the Government were sure they could win.

But while a slew of Tory MPs are slowly and sullenly making the move from no to yes, the Prime Minister still doesn’t have the numbers to get her deal through Parliament.

May lost last week’s vote by 391 to 242. She needs 75 MPs to switch sides to have any hope of it getting through.

The National:

Yesterday, Aberdeen South MP Ross Thomson indicated that he was still minded to oppose the deal, just as he had in meaningful votes one and two.

But the Tory leadership believes Brexiteer resistance is starting to crumble, and threat to push back the vote could all be part of Downing Street’s game plan.

Yesterday May and her ministers were on a joint effort to warn Brexiteers that if they don’t back the deal in front of them then there could be a significant delay to Britain’s departure from the EU.

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Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the Prime Minister said that if no agreement was reached before Thursday’s European Council summit “we will not leave the EU for many months, if ever”.

She wrote: “I am convinced that the time to define ourselves by how we voted in 2016 must now end.

“We can only put those old labels aside if we stand together as democrats and patriots, pragmatically making the honourable compromises necessary to heal division and move forward.”

Fox told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge yesterday: “I would say to my colleagues: all actions have consequences, and if you really want to deliver the Brexit we all promised... then we need to back the Prime Minister’s deal because there is no other deal on offer.”

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He added: “If we had an extension with no agreement and this was just kicking into the long grass with the chance that Brexit might not happen at all, that would be very, very hard for most people to swallow.”

Chancellor Philip Hammond told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show: “We will only bring the deal back if we are confident that enough of our colleagues and the DUP are prepared to support it so that we can get it through Parliament.

“We are not just going to keep presenting it if we haven’t moved the dial.”

The National:

Former Brexit secretary David Davis also urged his colleagues to support May’s deal, even though it was “worse than the one” that he resigned over.

Writing in The Sunday Times, he said he would have preferred a no-deal outcome but “the votes in Parliament last week have ruled it out and the visible divisions in the Cabinet mean the Prime Minister does not have the power to force a no-deal outcome”.

He added: “So the real risk is that the Remainer establishment will block Brexit, a betrayal that would reap a democratic whirlwind.”

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Thomson was still unconvinced though admitted he might be able to “suck up” some of his problems with the agreement, if the DUP were to back it.

“I’m not a member of the DUP... I will make my own mind up but we do have the same concerns,” he said.

Thomson added: “I simply won’t vote for something because the DUP back it but if those similar concerns are addressed round about the place of Northern Ireland, the issues round about the backstop, and I feel that enough protection is there to ensure that we leave the EU as one United Kingdom and do not treat another part of it differently, then of course I will be happy to suck up a lot of the other stuff I don’t like within the withdrawal agreement to see it through.”

Enthusiastic Eurosceptic Esther McVey told Sky News that, although it remained a “bad deal”, she thought Brexiteers support it as “the choice before us is this deal or no Brexit whatsoever”.

She also called for May to make a “dignified departure” from her role as Tory leader.

Her comments come after fellow Tory Brexiteer Andrew Bridgen claimed he’d been told by two of the Prime Minister’s most senior aides that May was willing to announce her resignation to get her withdrawal agreement approved.

Downing Street denied the claims.