Who is Nick Boles and what is his back-up plan for Brexit?

An alternative Brexit plan championed by Tory backbencher Nick Boles is gaining traction with MPs from all parties amid growing fears that Theresa May will be unable to get her deal through Parliament.

Boles, MP for Grantham and Stamford, says he has been invited to discuss his proposal with four Cabinet members, as well as leading members of three opposition parties.

“Everyone in Westminster is looking for a Plan B... The makings of a parliamentary majority are there,” he told The Times.

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Here is what you need to know.

Who is Boles?

Boles entered Parliament in 2010 and was known as a member of the “Notting Hill set” along with David Cameron and Michael Gove. Boles served as minister of skills under Cameron, and was also Gove’s campaign manager when the former Vote Leave chief briefly stood for leader of the Conservative Party in 2016.

Before entering Parliament, Boles was a Westminster City councillor and founded the influential think-tank Policy Exchange.

What is the plan?

Using the Norway model as the basis for his proposal, Boles wants the UK to scrap the planned transition period starting in March 2019 and instead enter the European Economic Area (EEA) - the common market binding Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein with the EU and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) - alongside a temporary customs union.

This would mean Britain “effectively remaining inside the single market and customs union until a relationship could be agreed that avoids a hard Irish border”, says The Times.

Boles’s original plan was for the membership of the EEA and EFTA to be temporary, but after listening to other members of the two groups he now says that it would be an indefinite commitment.

Who’s backing it?

In an an unlikely Cabinet alliance, Remainer Amber Rudd and Brexiteer Gove are both looking closely at Boles’s plan, and the DUP is hinting that it would also consider it, The Sun reports.

A senior minister told the newspaper: “EFTA will be our default option when all else fails. Amber and Michael are already on board, and quite a few of the others in Cabinet are not far behind them. We’ll need the help of Labour MPs, so they will need to be seen to have done their duty to their party first.”

The plan is also believed to have received a cautious welcome from Scottish MPs, including both the SNP and the Scottish Conservatives. “I’ve had discussions with Plaid Cymru MPs, with Labour MPs, with DUP MPs, and crucially with Scottish Conservatives, many of whom were not totally comfortable with the temporary idea in my original formulation,” Boles told The Scotsman.

“For many of them, going into the EEA before the end of the transition, before December 2020 is very attractive. You’d obviously get control of fisheries immediately,” he added.

Could it work?

Boles “believes that if May’s deal falls in a Commons vote then moderates of all sides may coalesce around his plan”, says The Times.

With the UK tumbling toward a no-deal Brexit and all other options blocked by a deadlocked parliament, “you can imagine increasingly desperate Remainery MPs joining forces to steer the country away from the clifftop”, agrees Politico’s Jack Blanchard.

The alternative plan would be opposed by Brexiteers and breaches most of the red lines set by May’s government, but “would match the objectives set out by Sturgeon and Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer”, says The Scotsman.

So far, though, “the Labour front bench is unenthusiastic”, says The Times.

Boles can, at least, count on the support of the London Evening Standard, edited by former chancellor George Osborne.

“It’s a course that May set herself vehemently against on entering Downing Street - but the backstop to the deal she’s done anyway mirrors an EEA-style arrangement,” says the paper. “If she wants to achieve some of that national unity she now seeks, the time is coming for her to ditch the last of the red lines with which she divided the nation in those early days of her premiership.”