Another week and another Westminster cliffhanger. This time it is whether or not the government’s motion on its Plan B for Brexit, up for discussion tomorrow, will be successfully altered by an amendment lodged by Labour Remainer Yvette Cooper.

If passed the effect will be to give Parliament the power to bring forward a proposal to extend Article 50 for possibly three months – even until the end of this year.

Whatever the outcome, the fact is that if the UK is to leave the EU with a transitional arrangement then something needs to give for Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement to become acceptable or it will not be passed.

Yvette Cooper on the BBC's Andrew Marr show.

With Parliament having invoked Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and passed the Withdrawal Act the existing law is simple.

If there is no alternative procedure made law then the United Kingdom leaves at 11pm on 29 March and immediately becomes a sovereign country again, trading under World Trade Organisation rules rather than EU regulations on a supposed temporary basis.

Last week was notable for a number of statements from all sides seeking to find agreement that might deliver the referendum result – even before Her Majesty suggested the importance of establishing common ground.

First Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Iain Duncan Smith and Boris Johnson, who have been appealing for the Prime Minister and her Cabinet to stick to past commitments, indicated they could be willing to support her Withdrawal Agreement if she can get the EU to time-limit or even delete the ‘backstop’.

Given there is a great deal more wrong with the Prime Minister’s proposal than just the backstop this was a generous concession.

Their real concern is that without finding some consensus Brexit will never happen.

Yet, as the Irish Deputy Prime Minister, Simon Coveney, demonstrated on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday, a compromise on the backstop will not come from the Irish Republic.

To win such a prize would therefore require the EU having to hang out Ireland – either by agreeing to previously dismissed technical solutions it has insisted are unworkable or by moving the ‘border’ to the continental mainland such as the ports of Calais and Zeebrugge (or possibly a combination of both approaches).

Irish politicians have every right to be worried about being hung out to dry following statements from the EU’s chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas and then its chief negotiator Michel Barnier.

Schinas caught the Irish by surprise and set hares running by stating at a media briefing there would indeed be a “hard border” between the Republic and the UK if no transition arrangement could be agreed.

This was completely at odds with what EU Commission President Jean Claude Junker had said when last visiting Dublin.

Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was then reported as suggesting a risk that the EU might choose to locate border checks away from the Irish border and to the French and Dutch ports, thus treating the UK and Ireland as a single block.

For those believing it could never happen the example of Ireland and the UK being outside the Schengen Area and therefore sharing joint security and passport checks provides a dose of reality.

Varadkar was not finished, for when pressed on the border issue later in Davos he claimed Irish police or even the army would have to man any hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

If the comment was designed to panic the UK government into concessions it was a misjudgment for the response was, as it has consistently been, that the UK would not install or operate any physical border infrastructure or controls.

It is only the EU and Irish politicians who are now talking about physical infrastructure.

What they misunderstand (and misrepresent) is not that Brexit-supporting Unionists say there will be no border, they say there is indeed a border already for many things (tax, currency, duties, various regulations etc) but it is essentially invisible and should remain so.

If the UK ends up trading under WTO rules, using the past experience and already existing technology means we shall be able to work invisibly for trade, even including animals and foodstuffs, by managing any checks before and after the border – just as already happens in other parts of Europe. That Varadkar, Coveney, Barnier – and British politicians who support remain – cannot admit to recognising solutions exist, when an endless number of papers and articles have been produced showing how an invisible trade border can work, suggests they either choose to remain ignorant or are intentionally mendacious.

What is also missed is that existing EU regulations are not impervious to fraud and deceit and cannot be bettered. Such arrogance and complacency was exposed as dangerously naïve during the 2013 Irish horsemeat scandal, when some Irish-made burgers were found to have up to 100 per cent horsemeat in them when labelled as pure beef.

The problem with Cooper’s amendment remains that delaying the departure date for Brexit will not in itself make arriving at an agreement on the border or other obstacles any more likely.

MPs shall simply be taking the pressure off both themselves and the EU and end up with nothing much happening for the next three months – returning to a flurry of brinkmanship and suggested compromises as the clock ticks down again to 11pm on say, 28 June or even the end of December. We thus have two paradoxes.

The first is how the backstop insisted upon by EU and Irish politicians to avoid an imagined hard border is now proving to be the most likely cause of the UK leaving the EU without a transition agreement – so a hard border is delivered.

The second is that the approach of the last few days and hours of time left for negotiation – before the UK concedes there will be no agreement and WTO trading rules must be put in place as the expected outcome – is what is resulting in a drive by all parties to find a solution. Take the imperative of the clock ticking down removes the pressure to find a solution.

Yvette Cooper’s amendment needs to be rejected and the focus of politicians on all sides should return to improving the Withdrawal Agreement so that it becomes acceptable to all parties – or acknowledging it will indeed be a very bad deal the UK cannot work with and instead move to improve the circumstances for leaving the EU without a transition agreement.

Something has to give if Brexit is going to be delivered - Brian Monteith