Tories draw ‘battle lines’ over Brexit plan
Britain
Theresa May was hit by two further resignations yesterday as bitter splits emerged among Tory Brexiteers over her plans for leaving the European Union.
In a further blow, United States President Donald Trump said that he wanted to speak to his ‘‘friend’’ Boris Johnson, who quit as home secretary, during his three-day visit. He declared Britain to be ‘‘in turmoil’’.
The prime minister’s team was openly criticised by the former chief of staff to David Davis. The Tory former MP Stewart Jackson said that May’s chief Europe adviser, Oliver Robbins, wanted a ‘‘Hotel California Brexit’’ where Britain checks out but never leaves. He also attacked May’s communications director, Robbie Gibb, as an ‘‘ersatz Brexiteer’’.
Jackson’s outburst came after it was claimed that he was blocked from acting as an aide to the new Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab. In the worst Tory infighting since the EU referendum, leaked messages from hard Brexiteers on WhatsApp revealed the discomfort with May’s stance.
In a message written after Davis quit as Brexit secretary, Laurence Robertson, the MP for Tewkesbury, said: ‘‘The sycophants and careerists will rally round the PM and her position, whereas the rest of us will be fighting for the future of our country. Those will be the battle lines.’’
In other developments:
– The Tory MP Andrew Bridgen announced he was submitting a letter of no confidence in May to Graham Brady, chairman of the backbench 1922 committee. Some Brexiteers claim that they will submit the 48 letters needed to force a leadership contest if May does not change course, although this is disputed.
– May has ordered her cabinet to a second away day on July 23 in Newcastle as she seeks to bind her ministers into the crucial phase of Brexit talks.
After the resignations of Davis and Johnson, who quit on Tuesday, the prime minister had hoped to reassert her authority yesterday at the first gathering of her new cabinet, before appearing with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.
The prime minister, however, blocked Merkel from answering questions from British journalists. The German chancellor said a white paper, due today, that will set out May’s Brexit plans in detail, marked ‘‘progress’’ but added that the EU was yet to form a common response.
Prominent leavers Michael Gove, the environment secretary, and Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, insisted that they backed the prime minister, with one source saying the mood in cabinet was ‘‘almost too exuberant’’. However, yesterday the resignation of two of the Conservative Party’s vice-chairmen, Ben Bradley and Maria Caulfield, was announced in a move designed to signal deep unhappiness with May’s Brexit plan put forward at Chequers, the prime minister’s country home, last week. The pair complained that it would curtail trading opportunities for a post-Brexit Britain and result in Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister.
Bradley, who became the party’s vice-chairman for youth in January, voted for Remain but is the MP for Mansfield, where the Leave vote was 71 per cent. ‘‘I cannot with any sincerity defend this course to my electorate,’’ he said in his resignation letter.
Caulfield, who backed Leave, although her Lewes constituency voted Remain, was the vicechairwoman for women. She complained that the backstop position on Northern Ireland ‘‘is not appropriate and should have been rejected’’ because ‘‘it has been used by the EU as a way of blocking a mutually beneficial deal’’. – The Times