MY BREXIT DEAL OR NO DEAL AT ALL
THERESA MAY FACES REBELS AND CHALLENGES OVER U.K.-EU PACT
I BELIEVE THAT I OWE IT TO THIS COUNTRY TO TAKE DECISIONS THAT ARE IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST … I KNOW THAT THERE WILL BE DIFFICULT DAYS AHEAD.
British Prime Minister Theresa May was accused of railroading a Brexit deal through cabinet on Wednesday and now faces a potential leadership challenge within days following a furious Tory backlash.
During a highly charged five-hour cabinet meeting, 11 out of 29 ministers spoke out against the proposed deal and at least three ministers are understood to be considering resigning on Thursday.
But May emerged from the meeting to say her ministers had approved her Brexit withdrawal plan — which has been compared to the world’s most complex divorce settlement.
“I believe that I owe it to this country to take decisions that are in the national interest, and I firmly believe, with my head and my heart, that this is a decision that is in the best interests of our entire United Kingdom,” said May. “I know that there will be difficult days ahead,” she said, but in a clear warning to possible rebels and anti-Brexiteers she said not accepting the deal meant leaving, “with no deal or no Brexit at all.”
The cabinet approval for May’s package marked the end of a remarkable 24 hours in British politics — a true cliffhanger, with social media and the airwaves filled with speculation about whether the deal, and May herself, would survive.
Inside the cabinet room, Esther McVey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, perhaps sealed her fate after an extraordinary shouting match with the Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill.
During what May described as an “impassioned” cabinet meeting, McVey was said to be “emotional” and “aggressive towards the prime minister” and called for an official vote to be taken. May refused.
Sedwill is said to have “shouted down” McVey, leaving her considering her position Thursday along with Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the House, and Penny Mordaunt, the International Development Secretary.
Consent was only reached when the ministers agreed it was “this or (Labour leader Jeremy) Corbyn”, sources told The Daily Telegraph.
Iain Duncan Smith, Tory MP and former Conservative leader, said, “This is unprecedented, cabinet is not meant to work like this. Ministers who disagreed with the Brexit deal are being dictated to. That cannot be good for cabinet cohesion, the cabinet is not united around this deal.”
Wednesday night, it appeared May could also have lost the support both of Eurosceptic Tories and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), on whose MPs she relies for her parliamentary majority.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the 60-strong ERG group of Leave-supporting Tory MPs, wrote to his colleagues to say he “can not support the proposed agreement” and calling on them to join him in voting against it.
Boris Johnson, who quit his job as foreign secretary over May’s proposals in July, had urged cabinet members to reject it. “It’s vassal-state stuff,” Johnson said. “For the first time in 1,000 years, this place, this Parliament, will not have a say over the laws that govern this country.”
Several Eurosceptic Tory MPs were Wednesday reported to have submitted letters demanding a confidence vote in May after saying it was time to change leader.
Conservative MP Peter Bone told May that her proposed deal would not deliver the Brexit the public voted for and she would “lose the support of many Conservative MPs and millions of voters across the country”.
The DUP also vowed to vote against the deal because of the possibility it would mean different rules for the UK and Northern Ireland.
Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s Brexit spokesman, said the EU was trying to achieve “what the IRA couldn’t achieve” by forcing through a deal that would weaken the Union. He added, “People went through 40 years of terrorism to remain part of the UK. Thousands of people died in that terrorist campaign because they wanted to stay within the Union.”
The 585-page draft Withdrawal Agreement, which was finally published after more than two years of negotiations, confirms a proposed “backstop” arrangement for Northern Ireland cannot be ended without the consent of the EU.
In effect, it would mean to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, trade and border rules would be different in Northern Ireland than for the rest of the UK.
May’s approach was defended by former Conservative Party leader William Hague, who asked his colleagues, “Did anybody really think you could leave the EU without a lot of compromises?”