Day of reckoning for May: rebel MP
LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May faces a day of reckoning as mutinous MPs try to trigger a no confidence vote over their opposition to her draft European Union divorce deal, a rebel member of her Conservative Party said yesterday.
‘‘This is absolutely the day at which we stand at the bar of history on this,’’ Simon Clarke told the BBC.
‘‘This day must be the point at which . . . action is taken.’’
‘‘If we continue with this plan we are simply not going to have a government because the clear threat it poses to the integrity of the union is something which our colleagues, the DUP, will simply not put up with,’’ he said.
Clarke, who has submitted a letter of no confidence in the British leader, said every hour and every day the Brexit deal was not rejected was a day wasted on credible negotiations.
‘‘It is quite clear to me that the captain is driving the ship at the rocks,’’ he said.
May said yesterday toppling her would risk delaying Brexit and she would not let talk of a leadership challenge distract her from a critical week of negotiations with Brussels.
In the days since she unveiled a draft EU divorce deal, May’s premiership has been thrust into crisis. Several ministers, including her Brexit minister, have resigned.
More than two years after the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU, it is still unclear how, on what terms or even if it will leave as planned on March 29, 2019.
May has vowed to fight on, but with both proEU and proBrexit MPs unhappy with the draft agreement, it is not clear she will be able to win the backing of Parliament, raising the risk
Britain leaves the EU without a deal.
‘‘These next seven days are going to be critical, they are about the future of this country,’’ May told Sky News yesterday.
‘‘I am not going to be distracted from the important job.’’
‘‘A change of leadership at this point isn’t going to make the negotiations any easier . . . what it will do is mean that there is a risk that . . . we delay the negotiations and that is a risk that Brexit gets delayed or frustrated.’’
To trigger a confidence vote, 48 of her Conservative MPs must submit a letter to the chairman of the party’s socalled 1922 committee, Graham Brady.
The Sun reported yesterday a total of 42 had been submitted.
At the centre of concerns over the deal is the Northern Irish backstop, an insurance policy to avoid a return to border checks between the British province and EUmember Ireland.
Critics say it would leave Britain bound to the EU in perpetuity and risks dividing the United Kingdom by aligning Northern Ireland more closely with EU customs rules and production standards than mainland Britain.
The DUP, a small Northern Irish party which props up May’s minority government, has threatened to pull its support if the backstop means the province is treated differently from the rest of the United Kingdom.
May said negotiations were continuing and she intended to go to Brussels to meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. She would also be speaking to other EU leaders ahead of an EU summit to discuss the deal on November 25.
‘‘We won’t agree the leaving part, the withdrawal agreement, until we have got what we want in the future relationship because these two go together. The focus this week will be on the future relationship,’’ she told Sky.
‘‘It is the future relationship that delivers on the Brexit vote.’’
Former foreign minister Boris Johnson, who resigned in July over May’s Brexit plans, said it was ‘‘either a tragic illusion or an attempt at deception’’ to think issues could be remedied in the next stage of talks.
‘‘I have heard it said that this is like a football match, in which we are onenil down at halftime, but . . . we can still pull it back and get the Brexit we want,’’ Johnson wrote in his weekly column for yesterday’s Daily Telegraph.
‘‘We are about to give the EU the right to veto our departure from the customs union. Why should they let us go?’’ — Reuters