Tories trade blows over PM’s Brexit blueprint

Just days before ANOTHER crunch summit in Brussels...

DAVID Davis yesterday launched a blistering attack on the Prime Minister’s Brexit plan as Tories traded blows over the Chequers blueprint.

In a letter to fellow Tory MPs, the former Brexit secretary said the consequences of failing to change course could include losing the next election.

As hardline Eurosceptics stepped up their attacks on Theresa May’s Chequers plan, one of her Cabinet ministers three times refused to publicly endorse the proposals.

International development secretary Penny Mordaunt said she would not give a ‘running commentary’ when asked if she backed the blueprint.

Downing Street last night launched a fightback against the attempts to kill off the Prime Minister’s plan, insisting it remained the only viable option on the table. Allies of Mrs May also dismissed claims that she faces a Commons rebellion of at least 40 Conservative MPs if she returns from Brussels with a deal based on Chequers. A Cabinet minister said they expected the number to be fewer than ten.

Mr Davis said: ‘If we stay on our current trajectory, we will go into the next election with the Government having delivered none of the benefits of Brexit, with the country reduced to being a rule-taker from Brussels, and having failed to deliver on a number of promises in the manifesto and in the Lancaster House speech.

‘This will not be a technicality – it will be very obvious to the electorate. The electoral consequences could be dire.’

Mr Davis said the EU was likely to reject Chequers at next week’s crunch summit in Brussels, or demand ‘further significant concessions’.

But he said a ‘Canada-plus-plus-plus’ deal – based on the free trade agreement negotiated between the EU and Canada – was ‘within our grasp’.

But the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said a deal based on Canada would break up the country. He added: ‘A Canada-style deal for the entire United Kingdom is not on offer from the European Union.

‘Northern Ireland would be kept inside the customs union and parts of the single market, effectively dividing the United Kingdom in two. As the Prime Minister and many others have said, that is unacceptable.’

Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab added: ‘ The EU are not offering us Canada, super-Canada, an FTA (free trade agreement) without keeping to the commitment that we made when (Mr Davis) was in Government in December to come up with a legally binding backstop, so that is a shortcut to no deal.’

Mr Davis’s letter came after Miss Mordaunt refused to explicitly back Chequers, while increasing pressure on Mrs May not to make dramatic concessions to Brussels.

Former Brexit minister Steve Baker claimed that as many as 80 Tories were ready to oppose the Chequers plan, but he admitted that number could be cut if Government whips persuaded MPs to back Mrs May.

He said: ‘The whips would be doing incredibly well if they were to halve the numbers.’

But a Cabinet minister told the Mail: ‘It is an MP’s job to make noise so that the Government listens to what they say. But when it comes to it, they have to vote for what they think is best for their country. I think the number who will actually vote against the Prime Minister’s proposals is not that high.’

MUCH of what is holding up Brexit now is personal political vanity. You could see it on display in the Commons yesterday.

We are at the late point – and yes, folks, this miserable chapter in the British Establishment’s annals really will soon end – where these miserable creatures, these grotesques, these wriggling puff adders, are looking for their personal endgames, trying to work out how they can square the final exit agreement with their past positions.

How can i survive? How can i claim some credit? How can i say, ‘See, i was right all along’? For politicians it is the desire to get one over opponents in the House and enemies in their own parties. For the Civil Service it is the hope of retaining enough complicated legal and customs arrangements which will mean they can still say ‘no’ to citizens. Therein lies their power.

Late in the afternoon the Commons Chamber got round to a Government statement on Brexit’s latest twists.

This could have happened much earlier had Speaker Bercow not granted three ‘urgent questions’ of a comparatively unpressing nature. First day back after a break, the Squeaker is always like this. He likes to reassert himself. Small children, when spoilt, often behave thus.

Theresa May, who might normally have been expected to give the statement, did not attend the session. Hiding behind the sofa at No 10, perhaps. ‘Where is she?’ demanded Labour.

Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab came along instead. Mr Raab, not a bad bloke, is a proper Leaver and a lawyer. He can speak sentences – whole paragraphs – that sound like the Eng- lish language but are entirely incomprehensible to anyone but a Whitehall policy expert.

Yesterday, in addition to that sort of legalistic and technical jargon, he kept saying that the European Union needed to ‘match the ambition and pragmatism we have shown’.

The May regime has shown pragmatism? Ha! Good one. Madam Glumbucket has been told by Brussels that her Chequers plan is a nonstarter. Same message from the Tory backbenches. Ditto the Labour party. Yet still she hawks it around, a dairymaid hoping to sell curdled cream. Not so much pragmatic as ‘deranged’, Boris Johnson might say. Boris was in the Chamber yesterday but did not try to catch the Speaker’s eye.

Sarah Wollaston (Con, Totnes) was still in favour of Chequers, though. She also wanted another referendum. You might want to put a fiver on the Tories losing Totnes at the next election if she is still their candidate.

Another Tory Remainer, Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe), was first to be called. That is the prerogative of the Father of the House but Mr Clarke had not been present for the start of the statement and the protocols of the Chamber are that you should not contribute if you missed the start. Bercow always ignores that for Mr Clarke. The two of them go out for curry once a month at the Kennington Tandoori, see?

Mr Clarke had nodded lustily when Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer had suggested that Mrs May could try to keep us all in the customs union. Sir Keir, who focused on matters so dustily procedural, they could have done with a squirt of Pledge, accused Mr Raab of reading prepared remarks. Er, he read this accusation off a script of his own.

HILARY Benn (Lab), who chairs the Brexit select committee, used his question to say that his committee had been right all along about some detail of the arguments. Jeremy Corbyn was in attendance in a smart new green suit. One of his shoelaces was undone. Pity Mr Corbyn’s poor image polishers.

in other news, Speaker Bercow told MPs they should help the parliamentary security staff by wearing their passes at all times. Before making this announcement, Bercow – who almost never wears his pass – put his own round his neck, employing a lanyard that was rainbow-coloured to show his support for gay people. Look at me. Ain’t i a livin’ Virtue?