So you thought Mrs May would comply with the command from MPs? Think again.

I said to a friend, a few minutes after the governments defeat in relation to the legal advice given by the Attorney General in relation to the EU Withdrawal Agreement, that they wouldn't comply.  I mussed that all was not as it seemed and I would bet my house that the government would somehow fudge what they had been asked to do.   

Oh yes. Mrs Leadsom, the Leader of the House, in a great flourish, announced that MPs would regret what they had voted for but the government would comply by 11:30 the following day.  So far so good.   

But clearly the government had no intention of giving the full details.   

Now we see that the copy of legal advice they gave to the House does not fulfil the contempt motion which called for the immediate publication of “the final and full legal advice provided by the Attorney General to the Cabinet concerning the EU.”  What they have given only relates to the backstop. 

So, it would be fair to ask Mrs May, where is the rest of it?   Or is she the "dishonest and duplicitous"  Cardinal Wolsey of our time as David Starkey ponders.

I choose Mrs May rather than The Attorney General  because on the Today programme this morning said she listened to MPs.  Well, clearly not enough to give them what they asked for in a pretty straight forward instruction.  Once again she seems to think if she keeps repeating three banal sentences (as she did four times in the interview this morning much to John Humphries exasperation) we will all come to heel.  

You know, the longer this goes on, you seriously do begin to wonder what Mrs May is seeking to do. It’s almost like something out of a John le Carré novel.  In plain sight the infiltrator does their work.  We need a George Smiley.