May facing Cabinet war over special deal for EU immigrants

THERESA May is braced for a Cabinet clash over immigration today after ruling that anyone arriving from the European Union after Brexit should not get special treatment.

Whitehall sources were last night predicting resistance to the Prime Minister’s proposal from Chancellor Philip Hammond and Business Secretary Greg Clark, who believe Britain could secure a better trade deal with Brussels if future EU migrants are offered rights not given to those from other parts of the world.

Mrs May is also expected to face a battle with Home Secretary Sajid Javid at a special meeting of the Cabinet today over plans for a clampdown on lowskilled migration following Brexit.

Mr Javid is set to cause a split in the ranks by demanding limitless access to EU migrants for more than two years in the event of a no-deal Brexit, to avoid damaging the economy in the short

term. He will call for any EU citizen that arrives before September 2021 to be allowed to live temporarily in Britain by showing their passport and passing a criminal record check, The Times claimed, until they apply for a visa to remain permanently.

Mr Javid is said to have argued that EU citizens will receive no preferential treatment in the longrun, but former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith blasted the plan as ‘bizarre’.

The row comes as Mrs May is under renewed pressure over Brexit, as former Brexit Secretary David Davis and ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who quit the Cabinet when she revealed her Chequers plan in July, are due to unveil what they have called their ‘ Plan A+’ for leaving the European Union.

This is based on a Canada-style free-trade deal that would see Britain apply European Union rules for goods and agriculture but would not include free movement of people between EU members and the UK. Mrs May

will use today’s meeting to try to shore up support for her Chequers proposals ahead of what allies admit will be a ‘difficult’ party conference next week. But last night it was claimed Mrs May will be told that ‘more than half’ of the Cabinet now back a Canada-style deal, while a number favour a Norway-type deal, which would entail staying in the single market. A source told the Daily Telegraph: ‘We now face a choice between a Norway-type deal and a Canada-type deal. More than half the Cabinet now support the idea of a Canada-style option, while there are maybe half a dozen who favour Norway.’ It was claimed hardline Brexiteers who were considering quitting over the Chequers deal will now instead throw their weight behind the new proposal.

Yesterday, No 10 officials stamped on reports that Mrs May is considering another snap election in November to break the Brexit deadlock, saying: ‘It is categorically untrue.’

Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab yesterday said that Mrs May’s Chequers plan remained the only credible option at present, despite its mauling by EU leaders last week.

‘We’ve come up with a serious set of proposals, covering everything from trade to security,’ he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. ‘We’re not just going to flit from plan to plan like some sort of diplomatic butterfly, we’re going to be resolute about this and really press the EU to treat us with some respect.’

Mr Raab yesterday left the door open on a Canada- style free-trade deal with the EU.

‘It’s off the table in the terms that the EU would even plausibly at this stage at least accept,’ he said. ‘Because what they’re suggesting is we would stay in a backstop arrangement for Northern Ireland, which would leave a part of the UK subject to a wholly different economic regime.

‘That can’t be right. So we’ll continue to negotiate in good faith. And I’m always listening to new proposals and new ideas.’

‘We’re going to be resolute about this’

‘They will have betrayed millions’

LABOUR was at war over Brexit last night after Jeremy Corbyn said that he could back a second referendum.

Mr Corbyn signalled he was ready to perform a U-turn if activists at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool use a debate on Brexit to demand a second vote.

Last night, allies of the Labour leader launched a behind- closed- doors bid to water down the terms of tomorrow’s Brexit debate – and fudge the issue of a second referendum.

But Mr Corbyn said he would accept the final result, saying: ‘Let’s see what comes out of conference and then obviously I’m bound by the democracy of our party.’

The move came despite warnings from a string of senior Labour figures about the risks of holding a second vote.

Len McCluskey, general secretary of the giant Unite union, which bankrolls Labour, warned it could cost the party a string of seats in its Northern heartlands, which voted heavily to leave the EU in 2016.

Mr McCluskey said he opposed a second referendum – adding that if one were held, remaining in the EU should not be an option on the ballot paper. ‘We’ve had a People’s Vote, they voted to leave,’ he told the BBC. He added: ‘There are significant numbers of traditional Labour supporters who are saying we’re going to vote Conservative because we don’t trust Labour to take us out of the European Union despite the fact that Jeremy has said repeatedly, of course we recognise the result, of course we respect the result, we’re coming out of the European Union.

‘For us to now enter some kind of campaign that opens up that issue again, I think would be wrong.’ Campaigners for a second vote believe that securing Labour support is critical. They believe that a Uturn by the Labour leadership could produce a majority in Parliament for a second poll. They also think the issue could prove decisive if Labour backed it in a snap election. But party strategists fear the issue could derail the party’s prospects at a future election.

Twenty Labour MPs represent seats where Leave polled 68 per cent of the vote or more in 2016. The Conservatives yesterday moved swiftly to exploit the issue. Party chairman Brandon Lewis said: ‘If Labour back a second referendum they will have broken their manifesto pledge and betrayed millions of people who voted in good faith to leave the EU.’

Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labour’s shadow business secretary, accepted that a second referendum would be seen as ‘a bit of a betrayal’ by the party’s Leave voters.

Miss Long-Bailey, the MP for Salford and Eccles in Greater Manchester, said: ‘We are one of those constituencies that voted Leave by a slight margin but we had lots of mixtures of opinion, it wasn’t a binary choice for a lot of people... I think depending on how the referendum was set out, it could cause significant issues.’

Shadow communities secretary Andrew Gwynne, Labour MP for Denton and Reddish in Greater Manchester, said: ‘We had a referendum. If you are not prepared to accept the answer you get then you don’t put the question.’

But Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson said it was right to allow party members – 86 per cent of whom were said in a poll yesterday to back a second vote – to decide the issue.

He said: ‘It seems to me inconceivable that if the Labour party democratically decides, Labour party conference decides it wants a manifesto pledge on a People’s Vote that we would defy that decision.’

Mr Watson said it was ‘highly likely’ he would back Remain again if a second referendum is held.

But Mr Corbyn refused to answer a similar question. The Labour leader reluctantly backed Remain in 2016 but declined to say if he would do so again. In an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, Mr Corbyn condemned Theresa May’s handling of Brexit, but shared her opposition to the EU’s demand to place a regulatory border down the Irish Sea. ‘I think it would be very hard to see how you should have checks on the Irish Sea, because that in effect brings back the question of the Irish border,’ he said.

Former Labour minister David Lammy said at a pro-referendum rally outside the conference yesterday: ‘We can sit back and allow the Tory government to wreck our country through Brexit. Or we can listen to our members and back a People’s Vote, which gives the option to remain in the EU.’