Packed rally denounces PM’s plan
SENIOR Conservatives were cheered by party activists last night as they lined up to denounce Theresa May’s Brexit blueprint and called on her to see how an independent UK can once again be a “giant” on the world stage.
At a packed conference fringe rally, MPs warned the Prime Minister’s deal agreed with ministers at Chequers would squander the opportunities of leaving the European Union.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the influential European Research Group of Brexiteer Tory backbenchers was cheered by activists who queued around the conference centre to get into the rally hosted by the Brexit Central website.
He said the Chequers deal “is not leaving the EU, it’s remaining under the yoke of the EU”.
The plan “is not only a dying duck in a thunderstorm, it’s the deadest of dying ducks in any thunderstorm”.
Urging Eurosceptics to “hold our nerve”, he said that if the alternative of a free trade deal similar to the EU’s with Canada could not be agreed, there was no fear in leaving on World Trade Organisation terms and having “a proper, red-blooded, Conservative approach to governing that frees the people from being tied down”.
“We have been Gulliver. Let us cut the ropes that the Lilliputians have tied on to us and show our giant form once again,” he added.
Voiceless
MP Conor Burns, a close friend both of the late Margaret Thatcher and of Boris Johnson, said the 2016 referendum was a “vote of confidence by the British people in themselves and the UK” which their leaders were failing to embrace. If Chequers had a slogan it would be “not in Europe but run by Europe,” he said, twisting a phrase from ex-leader William Hague.
Urging a Canada-style deal, he pleaded: “I say this in a spirit of friendship and affection: Prime Minister, we don’t want to change you. We want to change the policy of Chequers.”
Scottish Tory MP Ross Thomson urged Mrs May to return to her original vision of Brexit and “reset negotiations” with the EU or risk losing power to Labour at the hands of angry voters. He branded the Chequers deal “an unmitigated disaster [which] has humiliated us at home and in the EU, breaking this party in two and which sets us on a course to become a voiceless EU rule-taker.”
Earlier, senior Tories joined former Ukip leader Nigel Farage at a crossparty “Save Brexit” rally staged by the Leave Means Leave group.
He told the audience: “This is now about a matter of trust between us, the people and our political class. They are trying to betray Brexit and we are here to tell them we won’t let you get away with doing that.”
MP Andrea Jenkyns warned Mrs May: “Prime Ministers keep their jobs when they keep their promises.”