So the spellman amendment says we want a deal, the vote on May's deal says but not that deal, reality says there is no other deal. The Spellman amendment is not binding on the government. What is binding is article 50 and that runs out on march 29.
The ERG has no need to win a vote for no deal. All they need to do is prevent a deal being passed. May could request an extension to art.50, but she won't and even if she did it wouldn't be granted just because she can't win a vote in the commons.
Her realistic choices are:
1) withdraw art 50.
2) request an extension in order to have a peoples vote ref
3) accept no deal
Instead she's going for option 4) wait until the last moment and re-offer her deal as the only alternative to crashing out.
Her gamble is that people are scared enough of no-deal to vote for her deal. To counter that the ERG will vote against it, the DUP will vote against it, Corbyn will not vote for May's deal, he will probably try to whip labour to vote against it. Some may rebel and support it but not enough to get it through.
Once her gambit fails there are two choices left, she can withdraw art 50 or she can allow a no deal. She will allow no deal.
What I'm saying is that May could almost certainly win a vote in the Commons for the Withdrawal Agreement if ratified by a referendum (and if not, then A50 is withdrawn). The ERG couldn't stop that, if the Government were prepared to do along with it.
So the question is what happens at the very last point when she yet again offers her Withdrawal Agreement pretty much unchanged.
At the moment she says nope, she wants her withdrawal agreement and to leave on March 29. Well, we already know that that's impossible, no matter what happens to the Withdrawal Agreement -- even if it were accepted tomorrow by Parliament, there's not time to pass the necessary statutes and statutory instruments to leave on March 29, so she'd have to ask for an extension.
So I don't take particularly seriously anything she says about what she's going or not going to do -- as I've said before, what she says about not calling elections and when votes are scheduled doesn't seem to mean much, so we'll see what happens in a few weeks' time.
Similarly, I don't take particularly seriously anything Jeremy Corbyn says, particularly about whatever Labour's policy is on the EU, because there doesn't really seem to be one.
When it comes down to it, though, I find it very difficult to believe that he would put himself in a position where he tries to whip the Labour Party into voting against something that offers a People's Vote and thus enables no-deal to occur.
He'd face a massive revolt, both from the Labour front and back benches and, possibly equally importantly, from his normal supporters in the Labour Party itself -- party activists and branches, who are normally far more supportive of him than are his MPs.
I think the proposed amendment is something both May and Corbyn can -- probably will have to -- accept but don't want to be seen at the moment to be at all enthusiastic about it. I can't see them making more effort, though, to block it than is strictly necessary to maintain plausible deniability for its passing.
But there's lots that can go wrong, of course. We'll just have to see what happens over the next few weeks.