BORIS TO DEFY EU OVER BREXIT DEADLINE
PM will outlaw extension to UK’s departure out of EU
BORIS Johnson is to defy Brussels by outlawing any extension of the UK’s transition out of the EU, Downing Street sources revealed last night.
MPs were yesterday put on notice to vote as early as this Friday on his Brexit deal to crack on with the Prime Minister’s General Election promise of
getting the country out of the EU next month. A revamped EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill will enshrine in law his commitment to unchain the UK from free movement rules and multibillion Brussels payments by the end of next year.
A Number 10 source said: “Last week the public voted for a government that would get Brexit done and move this country forward – and that’s exactly what we intend to do, starting this week.
“Our manifesto made clear we will not extend the implementation period and the new Withdrawal Agreement Bill will legally prohibit Government agreeing to any extension.”
Mr Johnson will assemble his rejigged Cabinet today to begin charging ahead with Brexit, after the Tory election triumph ended the parliamentary deadlock. His thumping 80-seat majority means the revamped Withdrawal Bill is set to speed through the Commons.
It will be published on Thursday after the Government’s legislative programme is set out in the Queen’s Speech.
And Mr Johnson hopes to ensure the process of passing the Bill starts before Christmas, by holding a vote at the end of the week.
Ministers will ask the new Speaker, expected to be former Labour MP Sir Lindsay Hoyle, to break with tradition and allow first and second readings of the Bill on the same day.
Whitehall sources said the Bill had been redrafted to seek to outlaw any extension of the so-called “implementation period” after Brexit, when the UK will remain subject to EU rules beyond the December 31 2020 deadline.
One said: “It won’t be a carbon copy of the old Bill and we won’t be in a world of inviting MPs to extend the implementation period, because it’s not even up for discussion.”
Brussels is likely to see the move as a direct riposte to new European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who has complained the current timetable is too short to negotiate a new EU-UK trade deal.
The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has also called the current timetable for the trade negotiations “unrealistic”. Under the existing agreement, the transition could be extended by up to two years.
Whitehall insiders were optimistic about the chances of triggering the second reading vote on Friday.
“We are cautiously hopeful that everyone can get off on their Christmas break having got everything out of the way. It would be a first procedurally,” a source said.
Eurosceptics in the European Research Group of Tory MPs appeared delighted with the fasttrack approach last night. Mark Francois, the group’s vice-chairman, said: “The view of the ERG is that the Prime Minister has played a bit of a blinder.”
Overhaul
Mr Johnson filled three Cabinet gaps yesterday, but is expected to have a major reshuffle in February, after the UK has left the EU.
In a surprise move, Nicky
Morgan will receive a peerage in order to remain Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, despite her quitting the Commons before the election.
Cabinet Office parliamentary secretary Simon Hart was made Welsh Secretary, replacing Alun Cairns, who quit last month.
After meeting the Prime Minister, Chancellor Sajid Javid declared last night: “Welcome to the people’s government.” And Housing, Communities and Local
Government Secretary Robert Jenrick said ministers were “getting going with confidence”.
Downing Street sources also confirmed a major post-Brexit Whitehall overhaul, including an expected department for the new Australian-style immigration system promised by Mr Johnson.
Many functions of Baroness Morgan’s department are expected to go to a Business Department.
THE General Election revealed Britain at its uplifting best. It was impossible not to feel a sense of pride in our country at this vast, orderly exercise in democracy, conducted without a hint of riot or revolution despite its crucial impact on our national destiny.
The result was a heroically British triumph for common sense, as voters showed their preference for freedom over extremism and patriotic solidarity over snarling class war.
Throughout its disastrous campaign, Labour tried to paint our nation as a miserable, crisisridden land of mass poverty, ravaged public services and explosive divisions over Brexit, all of which would worsen through the continuation of Tory misrule. But the electorate did not swallow this bleak propaganda.
The overwhelming majority of voters had no time for such a message of institutionalised self-loathing. Unlike the radical socialists they have a profound love of country and a positive faith in our future.
In their decisive rejection of Labour, the electorate showed their collective wisdom, as has happened so often before. Indeed, it is a tribute to British democracy that the public nearly always reaches the correct decision.
DAVID Owen, the former Labour foreign secretary and founder of the SDP, put it well when he said in 2010: “I actually have great confidence in the British electorate. I think they have got every election right in my lifetime – and that has kicked me out of government twice.”
The intelligence of voters has given Boris Johnson’s Tories a tremendous opportunity, not just to establish their dominance over the political landscape, but to heal the nation.
Contrary to Labour’s dark rhetoric, the new Government can act as a unifying force. The swift achievement of Brexit by
January will be a pivotal act of national catharsis, finally breaking the deadlock atWestminster, ending the debate about our withdrawal and rebuilding Britain as a sovereign nation.
This will also open the way to a host of domestic reforms which will bring the country together, such as stepping up the fight against crime with more police officers.
Equally urgent is the need to increase NHS funding, radically improve social care, expand the transport infrastructure and focus on standards in education.
At the same time, now that there is a new sense of stability at Westminster and the hard Left has been vanquished, the Tories can raise the tone of political discourse. In a civilised democracy, it is essential that political differences can be expressed without a descent into poisonous hostility.
Labour will sneer that Boris
Johnson is too divisive a politician to achieve such harmony. But the Left’s caricature of him as a dangerous reactionary has always been absurd.
IN TRUTH, the Prime Minister is a classic, liberalminded Conservative in the one-nation tradition of Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill, as he proved in his successful eight years as a progressive mayor of London.
Critics complain about his lack of political convictions, but in reality this absence of ideological fixations is one of his prime virtues, enabling him to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic.
The same is true of his party. In the history of Western democracy, no movement has ever been more successful in winning power than the British Conservatives, and that record is precisely because of their preference for practicality over political creed.
It is an approach that, in contrast to the often ossified Labour Party, has allowed them to be endlessly adaptable to the changing political environment, frequently serving as the standard bearers of reform.
The first comprehensive plan for a National Health Service, for instance, was devised in 1943 by Tory minister Sir Henry Willink. It was a Conservative government in 1928 that gave votes to all women.
In the same spirit, the biggest house-building programme of the 20th century was overseen in the 1950s by a Tory administration.
The lack of sectarianism is also displayed in the Tories’ willingness to work with other parties: Liberal Unionists in the late 19th century, Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Party in the 1930s National Government, or the Liberal Democrats earlier this decade.
Boris Johnson now has the biggest Tory majority since Margaret Thatcher’s era. His was a remarkable personal triumph last week.
But his greatest achievement of all would be to live up to his promise to unite the nation.