THERESA May’s attempts to get wavering Tory backbenchers on side for her controversial Brexit agreement faltered yesterday.

MPs are set to have their so-called meaningful vote on the Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Bill next month, but with a significant rebellion, and opposition from Labour, the SNP, the LibDems and the DUP likely, she faces a struggle to get it through the Commons.

READ MORE: What's the purpose of Theresa May's political declaration on Brexit?

In a bid to even the odds in her favour the Prime Minister had sought to address key Brexiteer concerns in a political declaration, a 26-page text outlining the future relationship between the UK and the EU and agreed by British and European negotiators.

But despite the document, which was leaked yesterday morning, containing some concessions from Brussels on the Northern Irish backstop, Tory MPs queued up to tell May that it simply wasn’t enough.

READ MORE: Gibraltar is a thorn in The Tories' side that won't go away

Key to their concerns are the backstop, fishing access, the role of the European courts, and Spanish influence over Gibraltar.

Speaking in the Commons, May told MPs, the declaration would help “create a new free trade area with the EU, with no tariffs, fees, charges or quantitative restrictions”.

“This will be the first such agreement from the EU with any advanced economy in the world – and will be good for jobs,” she added.

The Prime Minister said the text included an “explicit reference to the development of an independent trade policy by the UK beyond this partnership with the EU, so we would have the abilities to sign new trade deals and capitalise on new trade deals with the fastest-growing economies around the world”.

“We will be able to get on with this negotiating deals during the transition period,” she added.

It moves the Government away from the Chequers plan, put forward earlier this year, which would have committed the UK to following the EU’s common rule book for food and goods in the long term. But it also kicked into the long grass decisions on much of the detail about what kind of long-term trading relationship the UK hopes to negotiate.

Talks can only begin once Britain has left the EU in March next year.

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Nicola Sturgeon described it as “lots of unicorns taking the place of facts about the future relationship”.

She added: “Fair play to the EU for pushing it as far as possible, but it adds up to a blindfold Brexit.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn described it as “waffle” and a “half-baked deal” that was “the product of two years of botched negotiations in which the Prime Minister’s red lines have been torn up, Cabinet resignations have racked up, and Chequers has been chucked”.

“This is a vague menu of options. It is not a plan for the future and is not capable of bringing our country together,” he added.

In the draft Withdrawal Agreement, published last week, the UK and the EU accepted that in the event of a no deal, Britain would stay in a customs union with Europe, to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

The so-called backstop would remain in place until a trade deal could be reached between Brussels and London. Brexiteers hate the arrangement as it needs both the UK and the EU to agree on the end date and effectively gives Brussels a veto on Britain leaving.

In a bid to bring her Eurosceptic backbenchers back on board, May convinced the EU to include a mention of the maximum facilitation, or “max fac” option in the declaration.

This would see some as yet-to-be-invented technology prevent the need for either a backstop or a hard border in Ireland.

The document says that “facilitative arrangements and technologies will also be considered in developing any alternative arrangements for ensuring the absence of a hard border on the island of Ireland on a permanent footing”.

During her statement to the Commons, May paid tribute to leading Brexiteers Iain Duncan Smith, pictured below, and Owen Patterson who lobbied her earlier this week over the max fac plan.

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Though the Prime Minister had that pledge in the political declaration, which is aspirational, the original commitments in the Withdrawal Agreement remain unchanged.

Shortly afterwards Duncan Smith made clear the Tory leader hadn’t gone far enough.

“I would hope that she would now consider that none of this is at all workable unless we get the Withdrawal Agreement amended and so that any arrangements we make strip out that backstop and leave us with that,” he said.

Johnson also called on May to“junk forthwith the backstop”.

It was, he said, the “hard reality of the Withdrawal Agreement that gives the EU a continuing veto over the unilateral power of the entire United Kingdom to do free trade deals or to take back control of our laws”.

The EU27 will meet on Sunday to sign off the deal.