THE MAY ULTIMATUM
She’s spent months patiently working for a deal with the EU, only to be ambushed and insulted. Yesterday, in a stirring riposte, the PM demanded respect for Britain – and delivered . . .
THERESA May told the EU to show Britain some respect yesterday.
Refusing to drop her Chequers plan, she insisted the Brussels bloc would have to give ground instead. The steely response came a day after eU leaders humiliatingly dismissed her blueprint at a summit in Austria.
Yesterday she warned them it would be a mistake to think she would back down. And she accused the eU of failing to show her
respect in talks. Her Brexit Secretary joined the offensive by saying the bloc had picked the wrong prime minister to snub. Dominic Raab insisted Britain would not be ‘pushed around’.
The setback in Salzburg had jeopardised Mrs May’s position a week before the Tory Party conference. But her defiant stance appeared to bear fruit last night as Donald Tusk offered a more conciliatory view of her Chequers plan, describing it as a step in the right direction.
The European Council president also said a compromise was still possible. But he insisted: ‘We studied the Chequers proposals in all seriousness. The results of our analysis have been known to the British side in every detail for many weeks.’
The Prime Minister’s unusual TV address yesterday from inside No 10 won praise from Eurosceptics and was likened to Margaret Thatcher’s ‘The lady’s not for turning’ speech in 1980.
Standing at a lectern in front of two large Union Flags, the Prime Minister said: ‘I have treated the EU with nothing but respect. The UK expects the same.
‘A good relationship at the end of this process depends on it. At this late stage in the negotiations, it is not acceptable to simply reject the other side’s proposals without a detailed explanation and new proposals. So we now need to hear from the European Union what the real issues are and what their proposals are.’
Mrs May admitted that talks were at an impasse following the Salzburg summit.
Proposals from Brussels to keep the UK inside the single market and customs union were dismissed by Mrs May as ‘making a mockery of the referendum’.
And she argued that no prime minister would accept a barrier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the country. Mrs May also promised the three million EU nationals living in the UK that regardless of the outcome of negotiations they would not be kicked out.
In a final message, she said: ‘I will not overturn the result of the referendum. Nor will I break up my country.
Mr Raab told the BBC that EU leaders were taking a ‘computer says no’ approach and he suggested the EU’s rejection of Chequers was a negotiating tactic.
Chequers would allow the UK to remain in the goods element of the single market through the adoption of a common
rule book with the EU. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who leads the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers, called for a new approach. ‘There is still no reason to suppose that Chequers can work either for the UK or the EU,’ he said.
‘It is time for the Government to start putting forward as its plan a Canada-style free trade agreement for the whole of the UK.
‘This is the most realistic approach and similar to the EU’s proposal.’
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the Prime Minister had shown herself ‘incapable of delivering a good Brexit deal’.
His Brexit spokesman, Sir Keir Starmer, warned that the country ‘was staring down the barrel of no deal’.
The pound suffered its biggest one-day fall in 1 months yesterday as traders fretted over the rising risk of a no-deal Brexit.
Sterling dropped by as much as 1. per cent against the dollar to below $1.31 after Mrs May’s speech. Analysts said investors had been hoping a deal would be agreed soon.
Hamish Muress, a currency analyst at trading firm OFX, said: ‘The rhetoric that “no deal is better than a bad deal” is startling, and undermines recent hopes that a deal could be finalised soon.’