EU CAN’T FORCE BRITAIN TO PAY EXIT BILL
EU lawyers have admitted that forcing Britain to pay a swingeing Brexit divorce bill of up to £85billion will be “legally impossible”, it emerged yesterday.
A memo sent to Brussels negotiators says that the EU cannot pursue the UK through international courts to claim the alleged exit payment.
Minutes of a meeting of European officials showed that negotiators have been warned off demanding continuing contributions from Britain for Continental farm subsidies.
News of the advice circulating in Brussels follows an angry row over the call for Britain to face a massive exit bill.
Veteran Tory MP Sir William Cash last night said the legal advice confirmed that the UK did not need to pay a penny to leave the EU.
He said: “This was always an outrageous demand.”
Sir William pointed out that both his Commons European Scrutiny Committee and a House of Lords committee had received similar legal advice. He said he hoped that the fact that EU lawyers recognised there were no legal grounds for demanding an exit payment showed that the message was finally sinking in within the Brussels bureaucracy.
He warned that EU officials risked undermining their own negotiating position by continuing to ask for the cash.
Sir William said: “The truth is they are indulging in tactics which are counter-productive as far as the British people are concerned.
“They simply need to understand that our vote last year was a vote to leave the EU. The UK has a history of hundreds of years of self-government and democracy.
“The EU can apply their own standards to themselves if they want to but not to us.”
The massive cash demand has poisoned relations between Downing Street and Brussels.
European Commission Presi- dent Jean-Claude Juncker has apparently accused Theresa May of living in “another galaxy” for rejecting the cash demand.
The Prime Minister is understood to have warned the Eurocrat that she sees no need for the UK to pay anything to leave the EU.
Officials initially floated an exit payment of up to £52billion, then hiked the figure to £85billion when the negotiations formally started last month.
The increase was partly due to a claim that the UK should continue to contribute to EU farming subsidies until 2020, nearly two years after the country is due to have left.
In the latest twist it emerged yesterday that a legal memo sent to EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier’s task force warned it
would be “legally impossible” to force the UK to continue paying the cash.
The notes of a Brexit seminar held by Mr Barnier in February showed that representatives from three member states argued that the UK’s share of assets should not be included in calculations of a final Brexit settlement.
A recent estimate suggested total EU assets could be worth up to £130billion. Diplomats from Ireland, France and Germany claimed the assets including EU buildings – partly paid for British financial contributions over the past four decades – should be ignored when drawing up the bill.
But Nadia Calvino, a Brussels budget chief, rejected their arguments.
European assets were included in the bloc’s annual accounts and therefore should be included. A senior EU diplomatic source said: “Calvino was very clear – the only legally defensible approach was not to cherry-pick the annual accounts.
“She could not see how the EU could justify taking into account all the UK’s commitments but not a share of the assets.”
THERE was a telling moment on the campaign trail last week in Oxfordshire when an angry Leave supporter confronted Lib Dem leader Tim Farron. After berating Farron for his dogmatic, pro-EU stance, the man then declared, “I’ll tell you what. I’ve always voted Labour but this time I’ll be voting Theresa May.”
That is now the message being heard across the country. A major realignment in British politics is under way as swathes of traditional Labour voters now appear to be switching to the once despised Tories. It is a change borne out in the recent opinion polls which have consistently given Theresa May’s party a lead over Labour of more than 15 per cent.
The Conservatives’ surge was also reflected in last Thursday’s local elections. Gaining more than 500 council seats, they advanced in the North of England, Wales and Scotland, territory which has long been unfavourable to them.
The growing ascendancy has partly been driven by the collapse in support for Ukip, which has lost its sense of purpose since the triumphant EU referendum. Even more influential is the toxic leadership of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, a pair of Left-wing revolutionaries whose epic incompetence is matched by their ideological extremism.
BUT the popularity of Theresa May has also been a crucial factor. Her resilient leadership is the rocket fuel that is powering the Conservative revival. She is turning the Tories into a national party once more with an appeal that reaches far into Labour’s heartlands. One survey put the Conservative lead over Labour among workingclass voters at 17 per cent, a figure that makes a mockery of Corbyn’s claim that his party is the voice “of the many”.
What is so remarkable about May’s success as leader is that she is not a natural communicator. Far less verbally fluent than Tony Blair or David Cameron, she lacks charisma and an ease in the spotlight. She can deliver a platform speech effectively but is an awkward performer in the Commons and the media. Indeed, her determination to remain on message means that she sometimes comes across as robotic.
In an unintentionally hilarious exchange on Radio Derby following Boris Johnson’s description of Corbyn as “a mutton-headed old mugwump,” she was asked if she knew what the term meant. “What I recognise is that we need in the country strong and stable leadership,” she replied.
But such limitations are part of her appeal. The electorate has had enough of smooth talkers who deploy verbal weapons of mass deception. As the process of Brexit begins there is a yearning for honesty, straightness, and national pride. May’s unruffled solidity is infinitely preferable to showy glibness. We need a tough negotiator, not an entertainer. She is a quintessentially English figure who exudes the respectable, trustworthy values of her upbringing as a vicar’s daughter from the Home Counties.
Her career is tainted by neither the sense of entitlement bred of inherited privilege, nor by the alien, antiBritish values of the liberal metropolitan class.
The smug politically correct chatterers have regularly claimed to be aghast by her attacks on mass immigration, multiculturalism and the loss of our national identity but her robustness is precisely why her popularity among the patriotic working class is soaring.
Kenneth Clarke described her as “a bloody difficult woman” during the postreferendum Tory leadership contest but this should be regarded as a badge of honour. In fact, she has already displayed her iron-willed determination in how she has handled the Brexit process so far.
Some call her a control freak but that could be taken as another compliment, highlighting her attention to detail and her rigorous self-discipline.
The former Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone, who as a Lib Dem was not a natural ally of May’s, says she found her “fair, competent, cool under fire, good-humoured, decent, intelligent, private and brave” – precisely the qualities required for the battles ahead.
MRS MAY might not be a gifted persuader but she is a superb political strategist with a streak of ruthlessness combined with a sense of how events will unfold. As in comedy, so much of the art of politics revolves around timing.
May so often gets that right whether it be in the passage of Article 50 or the decision to hold a general election. Her instincts are usually better than those of her critics. They sneered, for instance, that the election would provide a boost for Scottish Nationalism. Just the opposite has been true. It is Tory Unionism that is on the rise north of the border.
Without real political talent she could not have remained in charge of the Home Office for six years. Revealingly, she was nicknamed “Submarine” for her ability to remain quiet for long periods before making a deadly strike. It was that patience which saw her finally bring about the deportation of Islamist Abu Qatada.
In the long history of western democracy the British Conservative Party has been the most successful instrument ever devised for winning and retaining power. That is because it has generally been in tune with the country’s interests, pragmatic rather than doctrinaire.
Theresa May is the embodiment of that spirit, which is why she is heading for a thumping majority next month.
‘The PM is a superb political strategist’