MAY STRIKES MORE COMBATIVE POSE AS NO-DEAL BREXIT LOOMS
▶ Attack on EU may have been attempt to shore up party support, but did little to convince critics
Theresa May ended the week triumphant, judging by the front pages of Britain’s eurosceptic newspapers yesterday morning.
Having awoken on Friday to talk of humiliation at the hands of the 27 EU leaders, who had summarily rejected her Chequers proposals at a summit in Austria on Thursday, the British Prime Minister fired back.
Mrs May took direct aim at EU Council President Donald Tusk, who had told her the day before that her Brexit plan, which would mean the UK could cherry-pick the EU rules and laws it would observe, “would not work”.
“Yesterday, Donald Tusk said our proposals would undermine the single market,” she said, possibly settling a score with the man who had used Instagram to mock her. “He didn’t explain how in any detail or make any counter-proposal.
“So we are at an impasse.” Mrs May said that her European partners had acted in bad faith: “I have treated the EU with nothing but respect.
“The UK expects the same. A good relationship at the end of this process depends on it.”
She repeated her view that no deal remained better than a bad deal, explaining that she would “never agree” to Northern Ireland remaining in a European Customs union.
“In my judgment it is something no British prime minister would ever agree to,” Mrs May said. “If the EU believe I will, they are making a fundamental mistake.”
“May’s finest hour”, trumpeted the Daily Express on Saturday’s cover, while the Daily
Mail spoke of the “May Ultimatum” to the EU and signed up to the sentiment of her combative address.
But while the speech – so unexpected that it was temporarily postponed because of technical issues in Downing Street – against a backdrop of two Union Jacks went down well with the broader sections of the body politic, a more pessimistic response came from the foreign exchanges.
After Mrs May railed at the “impasse” she claimed the EU had created, sterling dropped by 1.5 per cent against the dollar, the currency’s largest downward daily drop for the year.
She also came under criticism from her own side.
Tim Stanley, a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph, often described as the house journal of Mrs May’s Conservative party, launched a broadside on Twitter against the speech, declaring himself “unimpressed” and “irritated”.
Stanley pointed out how Mrs May’s claim that the EU had not given reasons for rejecting Chequers did not stand up: “It has. Countless times,” he said. “Yes, there were insults on Thursday but the context is months of the EU saying ‘we can’t do this’.”
Mr Stanley poured ridicule on the idea that Mrs May was ready to take the UK into a nodeal Brexit.
“She’s not prepared for ‘no deal’,” he said. “You can’t stand there and level a threat that you can’t back up. There is no economic plan for no deal. That’s madness and deeply irresponsible.”
Attacking the patriotic nationalism that Mrs May was stirring up, Stanley said: “Save the ‘Queen May’ rubbish for anyone interested, although that lonely boat sailed quite a while ago.”
Instead, he called for coherent, long-term planning for an exit without a deal and a willingness to consider the Norway model for relations with the EU.
Having stood up to Brussels, Mrs May can hope the hard right of her party is at bay and she can fulfil the short-term aim of shoring up internal support before a fractious conference next month.
But as long as she clings to the Chequers proposal for future trade with Europe, she will be under domestic pressure.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the European Reform Group of hard-Brexit Tories, said after the failure of the meeting: “There is no reason to suppose that Chequers can work for either the UK or the EU.”
And any hope that she will one day gather a majority across the House of Commons to back an even closer deal looks unrealistic.
The clock ticks on towards the March 29, 2019 deadline and the options available have yet again shrunk.
She’s not prepared for ‘no deal.’ You can’t stand there and level a threat that you can’t back up. There is no economic plan for no deal TIM STANLEY Journalist, Daily Telegraph