Brexit squabble will open door to Corbyn, MP tells Europhile Tories
EUROPHILE Tories trying to sabotage Theresa May’s Brexit plan in the wake of the General Election fiasco were last night told to “shut up” by a senior MP.
Veteran backbencher Bernard Jenkin launched a furious attack at party colleagues, including Lord Heseltine and George Osborne, over their calls to keep strong ties with Brussels, such as staying in the EU single market.
The bitter Tory feud over Europe erupted into renewed infighting yesterday, with former Cabinet minister Lord Heseltine claiming that Brexit had become “a cancer gnawing at the heart of the Conservative Party”.
Tory MPs and peers traded blows over the issue yesterday after the Government confirmed that the Prime Minister’s blueprint for a clean break with Brussels is still on track, with expected support from the Democratic Unionist Party.
Mr Jenkin warned that Tories who were “rocking the boat” on the Brexit issue risked putting Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street.
“In six or 12 months’ time if we have another general election it will be the fault of those MPs in my party who are trying to capitalise on this situation to reverse the decision of last year’s referendum,” he said.
“Avidly pro-European colleagues who have never really accepted the referendum result, people like Lord Heseltine and George Osborne, should shut up,” said Mr Jenkin, who was re-elected as MP for Harwich and North Essex.
Mr Jenkin offered “100 per cent support” to Mrs May “to give the Government a chance to recover its poise and control the agenda”. He added: “Let’s get real here and remind the Conservative Party that the danger is if you carry on rocking the boat, you three or five people, you will end up with Corbyn in Downing Street.
“He smells power because of the disarray that’s following this election.”
In a series of interventions yesterday, pro-EU Tories called for the Government’s Brexit plans to be watered down.
Lord Heseltine, who clashed with Margaret Thatcher over Europe in the Eighties, claimed that Theresa May’s commitment to a so-called “hard Brexit” was to blame for the failure to win a majority in the election. “The message is that it is the cancer at the heart of the Conservative party – Brexit – that has to be dealt with if we are going to unite this country,” the Tory peer said on the Sky News Sophy Ridge on Sunday show.
“We are systematically destroying the principle market of Britain’s prosperity, and as long as you keep doing that, all this talk of greater prosperity and a new world is frankly misleading.”
Tory MP Anna Soubry, a leading Remain supporter during the EU referendum, infuriated Eurosceptics by claiming the election result showed voters wanted to keep strong ties with Brussels. “The British people have rejected a hard Brexit,” she said.
Ms Soubry claimed Mrs May did not have a Commons majority in favour of quitting the EU single market.
“I don’t think people out here in the real world actually want the hard Brexit that had been put forward and I don’t think they liked this ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’”, she said.
“People want a good deal and that may include membership of the single market.”
Former chancellor George Osborne also questioned Mrs May’s Brexit plans yesterday.
But former Tory leader Lord Howard insisted most MPs did back a clean break with Brussels, because both Tory and Labour manifestos included commitments to leave the single market and curb EU free movement.
He said: “There is an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons for Brexit and for the kind of approach the Government is taking. The parties that oppose Brexit and that want to reverse it didn’t do very well in the General Election.”
Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon, one of the Prime Minister’s closest allies, yesterday insisted that the Government’s plan for Brexit had not been altered as a result of the General Election.
“The new Cabinet obviously will meet early next week. I don’t think our view of Brexit has changed,” he told the BBC1 Andrew Marr Show.