May faces new Brexit challenge
Cabinet critics call meeting with PM that is expected to prompt more resignations
British Prime Minister Theresa May risks prompting more resignations as she confronts Cabinet Brexiteers today. Andrea Leadsom, the Commons leader, was expected to convene a meeting with Michael Gove, Liam Fox, Chris Grayling and Penny Mordaunt to decide how they can press May for lastminute changes to the deal.
May was expected to tell the ministers today that she will not renegotiate the European Union Withdrawal Agreement. They believe there is still time to negotiate changes, such as giving Britain a unilateral right to end any “backstop” arrangement over Northern Ireland.
The meeting comes after May warned that a leadership change wouldn’t make Brexit negotiations easier, and as opponents in her Conservative Party threaten to unseat her.
As furious Conservative rebels try to gather the numbers to trigger a noconfidence vote, May insisted yesterday that she hadn’t considered quitting.
“A change of leadership at this point isn’t going to make the negotiations any easier and it isn’t going to change the parliamentary arithmetic,” she told Sky News in an interview.
May added that the next seven days “are going to be critical” for successful Brexit talks, and that she will be travelling to Brussels to meet with EU leaders before an emergency European Council summit on November 25.
An announcement last week that Britain has struck a draft divorce agreement with the EU triggered a political crisis in Britain, with the deal roundly savaged by both the opposition and large chunks of May’s own Conservatives. Two Cabinet ministers and several junior government members quit, and more than 20 lawmakers have submitted letters of no confidence in May. Forty-eight such letters — or 15 per cent of Conservative lawmakers — are needed for a leadership challenge vote.
Asked about the attacks directed at her, May said: “It doesn’t distract me. Politics is a tough business and I’ve been in it for a long time.”
Dominic Raab, who quit on Thursday as Brexit Secretary, said “there is one thing missing and that is political will and resolve”.
Many pro-Brexit Conservatives want a clean break with the EU and argue that the close trade ties between the UK and the EU called for in the deal would leave Britain a vassal state, with no way to independently disentangle itself from the bloc.
The draft agreement envisions Britain leaving the EU as planned on March 29, but remaining inside the bloc’s single market and bound by its rules until the end of December 2020.
It also commits the two sides to the contentious “backstop” solution, which would keep the UK in a customs arrangement with the EU until a permanent trade treaty is worked out. That would serve to guarantee that the border between the UK’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland remained free of customs checkpoints after Brexit.