Davis aide: PM ousted us with a Remainer coup
THERESA May was accused of mounting a remainer ‘coup’ last night as she admitted that Downing Street has been considering a ‘common rule book’ with the EU for months.
Steve Baker, who last week resigned as former Brexit secretary David Davis’s deputy, accused the Prime Minister of sidelining the Department for Exiting the EU, and relying instead on advice from Cabinet Office officials led by her aide Oliver robbins.
Mr Baker said ministers and officials had been working for weeks on a White Paper that would have put the UK on a ‘different course’ to the plan outlined at Chequers. ‘Then we find at the last minute the Cabinet Office Europe unit sweeps in with a different proposal,’ he said.
He added: ‘It must be the case that for months, large sections of the Government were working on the Chequers plan, and they’ve just had a coup de grace at the last minute. I feel pretty sore about that.’ Mr Baker said the deal had put the country on course for ‘political disaster’.
In a separate intervention yesterday, Mr Davis said it was ‘astonishingly dishonest’ for No 10 to suggest that Brexiteer ministers had offered no alternative to the Chequers plan.
The former Brexit secretary said his ministers and officials had been working on detailed proposals ‘based on the Prime Minister’s speeches’, which would have seen the UK adopt equivalent standards to Brussels without having to slavishly follow EU law.
Mrs May yesterday acknowledged that the proposal for a common rule book for goods had been in the pipeline since early this year, when the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier made it clear that he would never accept the idea of regulatory ‘equivalence’ as the basis for a frictionless trade deal.
She told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show: ‘This is something that has been in gestation for some time. And the reason it’s been there is because we have been talking to the European Union and they have made clear that what we proposed in [the Mansion House speech in March] – this particular aspect – was not negotiable.’
Mrs May denied keeping Mr Davis in the dark, but acknowledged that she had allowed officials to draw up rival proposals to those being devised ‘ war cabinet’ of which Mr Davis was a leading member.
One insider said: ‘ David Davis knew about, but didn’t agree with it. In the end, that’s why he resigned.’
Writing in The Sunday Times yesterday, Mr Davis said the plans for a common rule book on goods and farm products would leave Britain’s ‘fingers caught in the mangle’. ‘None of this really amounts to tak- ing back control,’ he said.
‘Some are saying that those on the other side of the argument have not worked out an alternative ... That is an astonishingly dishonest claim.’
Mr Baker said there was still ‘just’ time for Mrs May to change course. He warned that if she did not, she could further split the Tory party and usher in a Labour government.
‘I hope the public’s eyes will be opened to what’s going on today,’ he told the Sunday Telegraph. ‘ An establishment elite who never accepted the fundamental right of the public to choose democratically their institutions, are working towards overturning them.’
Mr Baker said the public would eventually ‘know they’ve been betrayed’, adding: ‘If we spoil and wreck Brexit, which Chequers does, then we will get Jeremy Corbyn. That would be a cataclysm.’
‘This isn’t taking back control’