May tells cabinet: ‘Hold your nerve on Chequers deal’

THERESA May has told her ministers to hold their nerve in the impasse with the EU over Brexit amid calls from Brexiteers for her to grasp a Canada-style trade deal instead.

The British prime minister said her Chequers blueprint – rejected last week by the EU in Salzburg – was the only viable one on the table and that she remained confident of securing a deal, her office said in a statement last night.

‘At the same time, the government will continue to sensibly plan for no deal,’ the statement quoted her as saying. It came as Tory Brexiteers called on Mrs May to abandon the Chequers plan for Brexit in favour of a basic free trade agreement in goods along the lines agreed between the EU and Canada.

Leading Conservative party Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg yesterday said: ‘This has been offered to us by the Commission. They have offered us the best trade deal they have ever done with any country ever in the world, so if you want to call it Canada plus, or super Canada or supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Canada, that is what is being aimed and its being offered.’

He made his comments at the launch event for a new Brexit blueprint by the free market Institute of Economic Affairs think tank.

Former Northern secretary Theresa Villiers, who was also on the panel at the IEA launch, said she believed proposals put forward by the Eurosceptic ERG group on the Irish border issue ‘can unlock negotiations’. The ERG proposals, released earlier this month, set out that the border issue could be solved using electronic customs declarations, ‘trusted trader’ status for big business and exemptions for small businesses.

But Mrs May insists her proposal, which would see Britain maintain a ‘common rulebook’ with the EU for trade in goods and agriculture, is the only credible option on the table which would avoid the return of a hard border. Mrs May’s spokesman ruled out moving towards a Canada-style deal as it would create customs controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, saying: ‘The PM has repeatedly set out that we must protect the economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom as a whole.’

Downing Street said Mrs May told her cabinet to ‘hold its nerve’ as the Chequers deal remains the only plan on the table which achieves the goals of frictionless trade and an open border in Ireland.