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The Labor party has warned Theresa May that leaving the EU without any deal is a "political hoax" that would be blocked by parliament, "growing up fears that the prime minister's Brexit plan is coming unstuck.
Keir Starmer, shadow Brexit Secretary, said the House of Commons would "take back control" if the government was rejected by MPs. "There is no duty on MPs to surrender to a bad deal," he wrote in The Sunday Times.
It is broadly accepted that the Commons would reject the potential chaos of a "no deal" scenario with Tory MPs joining forces with Labor, the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party to vote against.
The prime minister had hoped to win a law firm for the first time in the past.
Downing Street now fears some pro-EU MPs will vote down any deal after the resignation on Friday Jo Johnson, train transport minister. Mr Johnson said that other Europhile ministers were "reflecting hard" on their position.
The European Research Group, which represents dozens of Eurosceptic Conservative MPs, has joined forces with the Democratic Unionist party – which is propping up the minority.
In a joint statement, Steve Baker, deputy chair of the ERG, and Sammy Wilson, DUP Brexit spokesman, said they would vote against the deal if they failed to establish an independent and comprehensive UK.
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Jacob Rees-Mogg, chair of the ERG, has already had a brief break from the affair. But on Sunday he said it would be acceptable to pay £ 20bn to seek an amicable "no deal more" arrangement. That, he wrote in the Mail on Sunday, would "finally dispel the 'crash out' Project Fear nightmare scenarios".
Negotiators are still trying to thrash out a legal fix to carry Brussels and London towards a Brexit agreement.
The blockage is over how to resolve the issue of the Irish backstop, an EU-UK guarantee to prevent a return to a hard border in Northern Ireland. The backstop would allow the entire UK to remain in the customs union after a transition in December 2020 – at least until a new agreement is reached.
But Eurosceptic Tories will refuse to accept any backstop that could leave the UK in the customs union forever.
Although some senior law ministers have requested a unilateral escape mechanism from the backstop, that is unacceptable to the EU. Instead Britain's attorney-general Geoffrey Cox has tried to create a "review mechanism" involving both sides in the UK.
Some law firms have asked for full legal advice on the backstop. But Damian Hinds, the education secretary, told the BBC's The Andrew Marr Show: "There's a long tradition that legal advice to government is not published."
Brussels has also insisted that the European Court of Justice must remain the ultimate arbiter of EU law, something which in effect limits the scope of any independent arbitration to manage future UK-EU disputes.
EU officials say that any backstop solution for Northern Ireland must apply unless it decides to stop it.
On Friday night some consensus has been reached on the Irish border, with three options.
The first is to reach a different agreement on Northern Ireland to replace the backstop, which could be the full EU-UK future economic partnership or arrangements specific to Northern Ireland.
The second would be to extend Britain's transition beyond December 2020, an idea that some ministers should have a decent solution.
The fallback option would be the new backstop for Northern Ireland, which would see the province under the EU's customs and allow the free movement of goods – a situation that would enrage the ERG and DUP.
Andrea Leadsom, the Eurosceptic leader of the Commons, said on Sunday there was no way in the UK. If Brussels was able to "overturn" any decision to leave the customs union then "I very much doubt that we would get it through parliament," she told Radio 5 Live.
Mr Hinds, a May loyalist, insisted that neither nor UK wanted the backstop to "go on and on", saying it was right to seek "comfort" from Brussels that it would be wound up rapidly.
But he warned Eurosceptic cabinet colleagues: "If you have a hard line, we must have a unilateral exit, a fixed, hard end date, that's very unlikely to be negotiable with the other side."
Downing Street tried to play down the idea that the negotiations were on the verge of collapse. "We are pushing hard and Brussels is pushing hard. This is what the end-stage of negotiations looks like, "one official said.
