Welcome to the Guardian's weekly Brexit briefing. If you would like to receive it as a weekly email, please sign up here. You can also catch up with our Brexit Means … podcast right here.
Also, producing the Guardian's independent, in-depth journalism takes time and money. We do it because we believe our perspective matters and it may be your perspective, too. If you value our Brexit coverage, please become a Guardian Supporter. Thank you. Top stories It's too early to say, of course, how the week's big domestic news – the resignation of Amber Rudd over an uncontainable immigration scandal and her replacement as home secretary by Sajid Javid – will affect the ongoing Brexit talks. On paper at least, Theresa May has maintained the crucial balance on the cabinet's key 11-member Brexit subcommittee: five pro, five anti, and the prime minister herself with the casting vote. But that may not be the whole story. Javid is a more reluctant remainer than Rudd, and does not wield the same clout. We do not know whether he will adopt a more pro-business immigration stance after Brexit, or – perhaps more significantly – whether Rudd, a committed pro-European, will join the ranks of Tory backbench rebels in upcoming Brexit votes. We may get an inkling of some of the above at a crucial subcommittee meeting this week to discuss the so-called "customs partnership" with the EU that May hopes will solve some of her Brexit problems – but that cabinet Brexiters detest.
Government divisions over the partnership plan were laid bare when David Davis reportedly threatened to resign unless May sidelined Olly Robbins, the top Brexit civil servant (whose idea it is). The Brexit secretary subsequently denied the story.
Underlining the impression that crunch time is approaching on the customs union, the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, warned that talks were at risk of collapse if the UK did not soften its red lines and deliver fresh thinking on the Irish border. And there was yet another heavy Lords defeat, on a potentially highly significant amendment to the EU withdrawal bill that could pave the way for parliament to send ministers back to Brussels to renegotiate if MPs vote down the withdrawal deal in the autumn. Best of the rest Top comment In The Observer, Andrew Rawnsley argues that the days when Theresa May could muddle through Brexit, keeping her party's hard Brexiters and unreconciled remainers together, are fast running out: The hard Brexiters are clearly fearful that Britain will end up in a customs union, or something very similar by a slightly different name. So they are trying to put a gun to the prime minister's head by predicting that it will trigger cabinet resignations, which I am pretty sure it would, and a full-scale Tory civil war, which would blow away her premiership. They menace her with a confidence vote in her leadership … which would not necessarily remove her as prime minister, but is not a prospect she wants to face, which is why they make the threat. May has not found an answer to this crunch other than to try to delay it. The government has stalled a chunk of the withdrawal legislation to try to swerve the moment of truth, but it won't be able to duck a binding vote for ever. The great rupture of the Tory party over Brexit cannot be avoided indefinitely. What might look to some like cunning cleverness is, on closer inspection, really an exercise in trying to postpone the inevitable while desperately hoping that something will turn up. And in the Guardian, Marina Hyde says David Davis excels in a "government of all the talentless", and even the Brexit secretary's allies are worried – but he's safe, because his colleagues are even worse: It's long been traditional to describe a lazy performance by an actor as phoned in. In the case of DExEu's David Davis, however, he doesn't even text it in. The secretary of state's performance in front of the Brexit select committee this week basically amounted to a series of emoticons. He can't do you an explanation of how in the name of magical thinking the government can square its promises on the Irish border with promises on leaving the customs union – but he can do you the shrug. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Did you miss it? Don't worry. Just ask him another question and he'll do it again … The cabinet is now cobbled together from two sides of the referendum divide, each of whom accused the other of the most despicable lies during the campaign. Ever since, preposterously, they have expected the public to accept that they are telling the truth when they act together. How is this supposed to work? … What will eventually unite many leave and remain voters, one suspects, is the enraged conviction that the politicians should have known what they were doing with Brexit, and rather sooner than this. Top Tweet A warm European welcome for the new home secretary: | 
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The days when Theresa May could muddle through Brexit, keeping her party's hard Brexiters and unreconciled remainers together, are fast running out, according to Andrew Rawnsley. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/PA 
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