LAST-DITCH BID TO SALVAGE EU DEAL
Embattled May offers Tory rebel MPs veto on controversial Brexit ‘backstop’
THERESA May was last night desperately trying to win over Tory Brexit rebels.
She has offered MPs a parliamentary veto on the most controversial part of her Brussels deal.
The Prime Minister’s plan would see the Commons get a vote before the UK is allowed to enter the so-called Northern Ireland “backstop”.
The offer, put forward by Mrs May in a series of private meetings with backbenchers, would introduce the extra “parliamentary lock” to prevent the country being tied into a customs union with the EU.
It comes as ministers were understood to be planning a new amendment to the motion for next week’s crunch vote on the
EU exit deal. Mrs May’s efforts follow growing fears her plan will be rejected by a margin of more than 100 MPs on Tuesday.
And the Tory civil war deepened when senior Eurosceptics accused Downing Street of plotting an ultrasoft Brexit that will leave the UK trapped forever in both the EU single market and customs union.
One said: “An attempt to effectively cancel Brexit and keep us in the EU is under way.”
Mrs May and her allies were stepping up their bid to persuade Tory MPs to back her deal.
Chief Whip Julian Smith last night addressed Jacob Rees-Mogg’s European Research Group of Brexiteers to put the Government’s case.
The Prime Minister was meeting dozens of MPs in small groups in her Commons office, imploring them not to block the so-called “meaningful vote” on her deal next Tuesday.
Several MPs who attended said the possible “parliamentary lock” to next Tuesday’s motion had been discussed in an attempt to give extra assurance about the backstop.
The backstop is an insurance policy to prevent a “hard border” between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic in the event of a delay on agreeing the UK’s future trade relationship with the UK. A Downing Street spokesman said Mrs May
was “meeting colleagues and talking to them at this time”.
Last night aides did not deny a report that three Cabinet ministers urged Mrs May to cancel next Tuesday’s vote because of the scale of opposition.
Insisting the vote would go ahead, a spokesman said: “There’s a binary choice here and people have got to focus their minds on it.
“Pulling the vote would not make any difference.”
But the “parliamentary lock” was failing to convince hardline Eurosceptics. One senior MP said: “It’s silly and few will fall for it.”
And Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen said: “This is just kicking the can down the road. The whole withdrawal agreement is a trap designed to keep us in the EU, not get us out.
“Why should we pay a £40billion divorce bill for this?”
Other Eurosceptics claimed the Government had colluded with pro-Brussels rebels on an amendment passed on Tuesday designed to strengthen Parliament’s hand on Brexit policy if the Prime Minister’s deal is rejected next week.
In the Commons yesterday, Mrs May acknowledged widespread concerns about the backstop but insisted her deal was the right one.
She said: “I recognise that concerns have been raised, particularly around the backstop.
“I am continuing to listen to colleagues on that, and I am considering the way forward.”
Former defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon, among a string of Tory backbenchers threatening to rebel against Mrs May’s deal, called it “a risk too far”.
He said: “If we are to surrender our vote, our voice and our veto, then we need to have a deal that’s worth all the risks of not knowing how it’s going to work out – and we do not have that at the moment. This so-called deal is a gamble – we put all our cards and all our money on the table and then wait for another two years for the EU to set the rules of the game – and that is a risk too far.”
Democratic Unionist Party MP Sammy Wilson said the deal had shattered his party’s alliance with the Tories to prop up their minority government.
Broken
He said: “Promises were made when we sat with the Prime Minister in Downing Street, where she said, ‘I will make sure Northern Ireland has the final say on this because the assembly will be the final arbiter as to whether or not these arrangements are put in place’.
“They were taken out of the agreement, there has been bad faith. The agreement and the understanding we had has been broken.”
Pro-Brussels MPs used the debate to intensify their demands for a fresh EU referendum.
Former Tory Cabinet minister Justine Greening said: “We now have some clear-cut practical choices and we should put those on the table.” Tory backbencher Sarah Wollaston said: “It seems to me that even the dogs in the street know that the Prime Minister’s deal is not going to pass this House next week.”
But, backing the Government in the debate, Home Secretary Sajid Javid said: “No one can pretend that this deal is perfect in every sense.”
But he added: “It is my belief the deal on the table is the best option available in ensuring a smooth exit from the European Union.”
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox told an MPs’ committee yesterday that Remainer MPs were attempting to “steal” Brexit through parliamentary amendments, which would be “a democratic affront”.
Asked how EU withdrawal could be halted, he said: “It would entirely be possible for amendments to a number of pieces of legislation, we believe, to achieve that effect.
“And it’s quite right, we cannot be bound by a motion in the Commons, but we would be bound by legislation.”
AT THE very moment that our country requires firm leadership, the Government’s authority is in tatters. A mood of permanent crisis now engulfs Downing Street, threatening Theresa May’s entire Brexit strategy and her very hold on the Premiership. After a string of recent resignations from her front bench, this should have been the week she fought back as Parliament began its crucial debate on her Withdrawal Agreement with Brussels.
Instead, she finds herself sinking even deeper into the mire. The Commons has become an instrument of further humiliation. On Tuesday afternoon, in an atmosphere of high tension, the House inflicted no fewer than three historic defeats on her Government, all in the space of just 63 minutes. There has been nothing like it at Westminster since 1978 during the dying days of Jim Callaghan’s minority Labour administration, which was the last to be beaten three times in a single day.
One of Tuesday’s votes was in favour of a vital amendment put forward by the arch Remainer and legal expert Dominic Grieve, who proposed that MPs, not the Government, should take charge of the Brexit legislative process in the event of May’s deal being rejected. Given that the Prime Minister’s draft agreement now looks hopelessly doomed, Grieve’s victory means that the Government has effectively lost any control of the Brexit agenda. The road is now open to a host of different options that might secure a majority in the House, including a second referendum or the repeal of Article 50, thereby halting Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. Labour Attorney General Lord Goldsmith remained secret, despite loud calls from the Commons for disclosure.
In other areas of legal work, client confidentiality is a longestablished principle, precisely because it both protects sensitive information and allows frank views to be expressed. Thanks to Tuesday’s decision, a precedent has now been set which could impinge on questions of security, finance and diplomacy. As Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the House, put it yesterday: “Law officers will be very reluctant to give any advice to the Government that they might then see published on the front pages of the newspapers.” MPs, she added, may “live to regret their vote”.
But none of this carried any weight with the Commons. Nor was the discontent of MPs quelled by a rare appearance at the dispatch box from the Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox, who gave a wide-ranging legal assessment of May’s deal. Still brimming with dissatisfaction the House voted not only to hold the Government in contempt but to demand immediate publication.
Ministers complied with this instruction yesterday morning. Once the document finally became public, we could see why the Government was so desperate to keep it secret. For the Attorney General’s advice confirms all the worst fears about May’s proposed deal: that, rather than achieving independence, it will trap Britain in a permanent Zombie Brexit. Geoffrey Cox’s letter to the Cabinet warns that May’s deal could leave the United Kingdom stuck in “protracted and repeated rounds of negotiations”, without any real opportunity of escape. This twilight zone, said Cox, could “endure indefinitely” since “the Withdrawal Agreement cannot provide a legal means of compelling the EU” to expedite talks on a new relationship with Britain.
So we could remain in limbo, deprived of our national freedom and shackled to EU rule. This is not what the majority voted for in the 2016 Referendum. The Attorney General’s explosive advice shows that the Tory sceptics were justified in their hostility to May’s dubious agreement, which provides Brexit in name only. Even Government loyalists, like exDefence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon and former Chief Whip Mark Harper have said that they will vote against the deal because it neither honours the democratic wishes of the British people nor allows Britain to exploit the benefits of independence, especially on trade.
B‘Nothing like it since dying days of 1978’
UT more damning than any Tory MP’s verdict was the condemnation by Lord King, the former Governor of the Bank of England, who said this week that “it simply beggars belief that a Government could be hell-bent on a deal that hands over £39 billion, while giving the EU indefinitely and a veto on ending this state of fiefdom.” Lord King is absolutely right. Indeed, the game was given away by the EU’s Secretary General, German bureaucrat Martin Selmayr, who reportedly said “the power is with us” after the signing of May’s deal.
The Prime Minister is in a mess of her own making. As a Remain supporter, she has always seen Brexit as a problem to be minimised, not a cause to be celebrated. Now the grim consequences of her flawed approach have been exposed in the worsening chaos that envelops her Government.