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  Courtesy of the Sunday Times.
  
  Theresa May will seek to emulate Margaret Thatcher by travelling to Brussels to demand a better Brexit deal in a last-ditch attempt to save her government from collapse. Ministers and aides have convinced the prime minister that she needs “a handbag moment” with EU bosses if she is to have any chance of persuading her own MPs to support her. They expect May to announce tomorrow that she will launch a final throw of the diplomatic dice with a dash to Brussels, a move that could result in Tuesday’s vote being postponed.
  
  Senior ministers bombarded the prime minister with warnings yesterday that she has to look like she is fighting for a deal that Brexiteers can support — or face a catastrophic defeat that could lead to Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister by Christmas. One senior cabinet minister said: “People in No 10 think she needs to have a ‘handbag moment’ where she says: ‘Up with this I will not put.’”
  But The Sunday Times can reveal that even as she makes a final appeal to theEU, some of her most trusted ministers are already planning for a new referendum.
  
  May’s deputy, David Lidington, and the justice secretary, David Gauke, have been in talks with Labour MPs to gauge whether there is a Commons majority for a second referendum or a Norway-style deal inside the single market if May’s mission fails. Allies say they have concluded that MPs are now most likely to back a “people’s vote”, piling pressure on the prime minister to achieve concessions that would get rebel MPs behind her plan. Civil servants have war-gamed two versions of a new vote. The first would feature a choice between May’s deal and remain. The second would see voters asked to choose between leave and remain with a second question asking them, in the event of a leave win, whether they prefer the existing deal or a no-deal departure on World Trade Organisation terms.

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