Parliament is sitting on a Saturday for the first time since the Falklands War in order to debate and vote on Mr Johnson’s new Brexit deal with the EU. The new deal would see a Northern Ireland in a hybrid customs arrangement, meaning some checks for goods crossing the Irish Sea. Mr Johnson has implored MPs to “get Brexit done”, but Mr Letwin has other plans.

The Letwin Amendment seeks to withhold approval for the Prime Minister’s deal until legislation implementing the UK’s withdrawal from the EU has become law.

If passed, this amendment would automatically trigger the Benn Act, forcing Mr Johnson to request a further extension until January 31, 2020.

Labour and other opposition parties look to back the amendment, as well as former Tory rebels like Phillip Hammond and Dominic Grieve.

This morning, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg appeared to suggest the Government will pull the vote if the Letwin Amendment is passed.

She tweeted: “The numbers are pretty much 50/50 at the moment (48-52 or 52-48 anyone?) but if the Letwin Amendment which would try to force a delay until all the legislation implementing the deal is through passes, that might change the terms of the day a lot – that vote will come first.”

Before Mr Letwin became a lead Remainer in the Commons, he was one of David Cameron’s closest advisers as Minister of State for Government Policy and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

However, in 2015 he had to apologise after memos were released from his time as Margaret Thatcher’s aide got him embroiled in a racism row.

Every year confidential Government documents form 30 years ago are released by the National Archives.

Usually, the vast majority of letters and statements are patently dull, but in 2015 a five-page letter written by Mr Letwin and a fellow aide Vernon Hartley Booth to Mrs Thatcher revealed comments that were described as “offensive”, “disgusting” and “racist”.

They were advising the then-Prime Minister how to respond to social unrest and rioting in inner-city black communities across the UK in the 1980s – for example in Brixton, Tottenham, Liverpool and Birmingham.

They dismissed proposals by two Government ministers to invest in a scheme designed to encourage black entrepreneurs, suggesting such an initiative would only lead to them spending money on “discos and drugs”.

The memo read: “[Lord] Young’s new entrepreneurs will set up in the disco and drug trade; Kenneth Baker’s refurbished council blocks will decay through vandalism combined with neglect, and people will graduate from temporary training or employment programmes into unemployment and crime.”

They also encouraged Mrs Thatcher not to invest in public services in areas where riots took place, arguing that rioting was down to “bad moral attitudes”.

Mr Letwin and his colleague wrote: “Riots, criminality and social integration are caused solely by individual characters and attitudes.

“So long as bad moral attitudes remain, all efforts to improve the inner cities will flounder.”

Some of their most shocking comments were comparing rioting black communities with those of white working-class people, who they claimed lived in similar conditions without rioting.

They said: “Lower-class, unemployed white people lived for years in appalling slums without a breakdown of public order on anything like the present scale; in the midst of the depression, people in Brixton went out, leaving their grocery money in a bag by the front door, and expecting to see groceries when they got back.”

They went on to claim that the riots were not at all related to racism against black communities or social deprivation, despite evidence that racism was rampant in the Metropolitan Police at the time.

They wrote: “The root of social malaise is not poor housing, or youth ‘alienation’, or the lack of a middle class.”

Finally, Mr Letwin and Mr Booth said categorically that “there should be no ‘positive discrimination’” initiatives to help close the racial inequality gap or any state-funded solutions at all.

Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson blasted the comments “ignorant and deeply racist” and then-Labour MP Chuka Umunna said his attitude was “disgusting and appalling”.

After these memos were released in 2015, Mr Letwin apologised “unreservedly” and admitted they were “badly worded and wrong”.

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