MAY’S WINNING BREXIT BATTLE
PM: Momentum is building to clinch deal with Brussels
THERESA May yesterday declared she is winning support from across the EU for her drive to strike a post-Brexit trade deal with Brussels.
The Prime Minister brushed aside fears that she will not be able to reach agreement for Britain’s new relationship with the bloc saying “momentum” was building behind her.
A string of European leaders personally praised Mrs May’s plan for the UK’s departure laid out in her recent speech in Florence, she revealed.
And she quashed talk of a party revolt against her, insisting that her Cabinet was united around her mission to take the country out of the EU.
On the opening day of the Conservative conference in Manchester, the Prime Minister said she had spoken with German Chancellor
Angela Merkel and other European leaders at an informal EU summit in Estonia at the end of last week.
She said during an interview on BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “I certainly got the impression and was being told that they had welcomed the Florence speech, that the Florence speech had given a momentum to the negotiations.”
The EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier had also welcomed her Brexit plan.
She added: “He was very clear that the speech had changed things and I think the negotiations over the last week were conducted in a more positive framework.”
The Prime Minister’s words were supported during an address to the party faithful by Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire and he drew applause when he said: “We will leave the European Union in 2019 as one United Kingdom. That includes leaving the single market and the customs union so that we can strike new trade deals with the rest of the world.”
Tory activists in Manchester were in a muted mood yesterday at their first national gathering since the shock loss of the party’s Commons majority in the June general election.
But Mrs May dismissed questions about her position because of her role in the election.
Speculation about the Prime Minister’s leadership intensified following reports that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had privately suggested she would be forced out of Downing Street within a year.
Chancellor Philip Hammond is also said to be at odds with his party leader. Mr Hammond, who will today announce a £400million rail and road boost for the north of England, disagrees with the idea of a hard Brexit.
But Mrs May said all ministers were pulling together behind her Brexit plan. She said: “What I have is a Cabinet that are united in the mission of this Government, and that is what you will see this week.”.
She added ministers were “united in a mission to build a country that works for everyone and agreed on the approach that we took in Florence.”
Mrs May refused to talk about whether or not she would resign if she failed to agree a deal saying: “I’m working to get a deal. And I think that is what the whole focus of government is, on making sure that we get a deal.
“So let’s put our efforts into that. Let’s do everything that we can, not just to get a deal, but to get a deal that works for the UK and I believe that the deal that works for the UK will also work for the EU.”
Asked if Mr Johnson was “unsackable” despite his apparent desire to become Prime Minister, Mrs May replied: “Let’s be very clear about what we have here in this Government. We have a Government that is determined to build a country that works for everyone. You talk about Boris’s job, you talk about my job. I think the people watching this programme are actually interested in what we are going to do for their jobs and their futures and their children’s futures.”
But grassroots favourite Jacob ReesMogg yesterday questioned the Prime Minister’s Brexit tactics.
Speaking at a Conservative Home fringe event at the conference, he said he had “doubts” over Mrs May’s Florence speech. He said: “From a tactical point of view I am not sure we want to be giving away our best cards to the EU before they move at all.”
Asked about whether the election campaign was “framed by Brexit” the MP who is a favourite to be the next party leader launched another attack.
He said: “I thought the election was framed by being nasty to old people and taking their money.”
THE Tories meet for their annual conference this week in an unsettled mood. Still reeling from the election result, alarmed at the surge for Jeremy Corbyn, the party is tense when it should be calm and calculating.
One clear sign of this is the relentless focus on the ambitions of Boris Johnson. No other member of the Cabinet generates anything like the controversy and excitement that he attracts. Every utterance by the Foreign Secretary is a cue for another media frenzy.
Only a fortnight ago he caused a furore with a newspaper article that outlined a bold vision for an independent United Kingdom after our withdrawal from the EU. In recent days he has provoked another stir with his warning that any transition period after Brexit in 2019 must be strictly limited.
He first set out the call in a typically powerful speech last Wednesday, declaring that “our brilliant companies” will triumph on the global stage once “they are finally unbound, unshackled”. Then in an interview over the weekend Boris specified that the transition should be an absolute maximum of two years “and not a second more”.
Inevitably, just like his inspirational newspaper article on British freedom, his argument against a prolonged delay on Brexit has been seen entirely through the prism of Cabinet turmoil and his own desire to reach the top.
AMID this speculation he has been the target of repeated venomous attacks which portray him variously as a clown, a menace and an egomaniac. Much of this character assassination lacks any perspective.
After all, most politicians are ferociously ambitious but Boris arouses a special brand of jealous fury within Westminster because of his unique ability to connect with the public and his role as the leading Tory champion of the Brexit cause.
Yet all the personalised abuse and leadership talk cannot distract from the substance of Boris’s case. His newspaper article a fortnight ago was so potent because it served as a welcome counterblast to all the pathetic timidity from the political establishment over Brexit. Similarly, his warning on transition is correct because there is a real danger that this period will be used by the pro-EU brigade to frustrate the end of Brussels rule. Transition could become not a means of adjustment to a new reality, but a deliberate obstruction to prevent the democratic change for which the British people voted.
In her high-profile Florence speech, Theresa May said the need to put new business and immigration systems in place “point to an implementation period of around two years”. But even this somewhat vague deadline was heavily qualified.
“How long the period is should be determined simply by how long it will take to prepare and implement the new processes,” she said, a condition that could be deliberately exploited by Remoaner bureaucrats and big corporations to achieve continual postponement of Brexit. There will always be an excuse to demand another six months, another year.
In the meantime, depressingly, complete free movement will be maintained throughout the transition period. Even after our withdrawal in March 2019 we will still not have control of our borders. The European influx will continue, putting a brutal strain on public services and welfare state.
Official statistics show that in the last year alone 248,000 EU citizens settled here, though that figure is probably a gross underestimate since 576,000 National Insurance numbers were dished out to EU migrants over the same timescale.
Just as disturbingly, we will not be allowed to conclude any international trade agreements during transition, destroying one of the central advantages of Brexit. Yet we will still have to pay at least £10billion a year to Brussels, though we will have no say in its governance. So during transition, we will have the worst of all worlds: taxation and subjugation without any representation.
The EU could even impose new rules and taxes on us, like the Financial Transactions levy, which would wreck the City of London. Moreover, an open-ended transition period will give the EU an incentive to ensure that the trade talks are dragged out without any conclusion, so that our financial payments are maximised and our commercial liberties minimised.
The current hesitant, defensive approach is a recipe for institutional paralysis. That is why Boris was justified in laying down his red line. What Britain needs is boldness, not prevarication.
OUR political class sees Brexit as a threat to be nullified rather than an opportunity to be utilised. The dogmatic attachment to a lengthy, unbalanced transition feeds into the narrative of enfeeblement.
The anti-Brexiteers like to talk of avoiding “a cliff edge” but in truth a more pertinent analogy is with someone nervously standing by the edge of a swimming pool, endlessly dipping in a toe but too scared to jump.
But even the most anxious swimmers find the water invigorating once they take the plunge. The same will be true once we regain our national freedom. A two-year transition is easily long enough.
That will mean that it will be 2021 before we fully leave, five years after the referendum verdict, exactly the same length of time it took Churchill to win the war.
As one of Churchill’s biographers, Boris knows that we have nothing to fear from democratic self-governance.
‘We need boldness not prevarication’