Seems to me that the Government looks like it's going to call the EU's bluff over the Irish backstop. They're right to do so. Few quick thoughts 👇
1) The backstop agreed back in December is an odd beast. It obviously only comes into effect when the UK leaves the EU and in the absence of wider agreed solutions - ie a future partnership deal. So it applies to the UK as a 3rd country without a "deal".
2) The commitment is to "full alignment" with "those rules of the Internal Market & the Customs Union" which now or in future supports North-South cooperation, all-island economy & Belfast Agreement 
3) The commitment is therefore NOT to follow all single market & customs union rules. In return this will ensure no hard border between NI & Ireland. The backstop is therefore in of itself a bespoke & cherry picked agreement of the sort the EU claims not to be willing to offer UK
4) There was some concern at time amongst EU circles that the backstop was problematic on those grounds. But it was obviously strongly supported by Ireland and agreed nonetheless.
5) At the time May's Government was obsessed with getting in principle agreement for a standstill transition which they did. But to my mind they gave away too much with the backstop. Still, as explained, the backstop is not as helpful to EU as they claim
6) The EU has sought to insist that backstop applies ONLY to Northern Ireland, and NOT the whole of the UK. The UK correctly says that would be unacceptable as it would entail an internal customs border within UK
7) The Brexit Cabinet now is reportedly turning around the idea of the backstop and saying it will apply it to all the UK. This is the right negotiating argument for the UK and logically makes sense. It's utterly implausible for any UK Government to apply the backstop only to NI
8) We know that the Customs systems don't look likely to be ready before the end of the standstill transition. So it may be necessary to delay the UK's effective exit from the Customs Union. The Government is seizing on the backstop as a way of doing that.
9) But the EU will likely strongly resist the application of the backstop to the whole UK. Fine. It's a *negotiation* we don't have to accept everything they say as if it was carved in stone on Mount Sinai.
10/10) More importantly EU wants to use backstop to squeeze the UK side. This version of the backstop flips things round and will incentivise the EU actually to get on with negotiating our future economic partnership rather than continually creating process reasons for delaying
