COME ON ARLENE
Ruth Davidson tries to get DUP leader Foster on board with her plan for UK-wide softer deal
RUTH Davidson was crooning love songs to Arlene Foster yesterday in a bid to push the UK towards a softer Brexit.
The Scottish Tory leader reached out to the DUP leader with a performance of Come On Arlene that leant more to desperation than Dexys Midnight Runners’ 1982 No1 hit Come On Eileen.
Davidson backed Foster who, on Monday, had torpedoed a deal proposed by the Government that would have left Northern Ireland alone aligned with EU rules.
As Theresa May struggled to gain some authority and get an EU deal back on track, Davidson put herself to the forefront of the Brexit debate by demanding any “regulatory alignment” between Northern Ireland and Ireland must also apply across the UK.
In morning shuttle diplomacy, Davidson spoke to Foster and phoned the Prime Minister to relay her concerns before releasing a public warning that a lop-sided Brexit deal could break up the UK.
Davidson said the country should not be divided by “different deals for different home nations” in the wake of the UK Government’s chaotic attempt to settle the Irish border issue.
She warned “no government of the Conservative and Unionist Party should countenance any deal that compromises the political, economic or constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom”.
She added: “If regulatory alignment in a number of specific areas is the requirement for a frictionless border, then the Prime Minister should conclude this must be on a UK-wide basis.”
A senior party source said there was no split between the Prime Minister and Davidson, who both want a close relationship with the EU after Brexit in March 2019.
The source said: “There was no disagreement, it is just that reality is beginning to sink in.
“As the Prime Minister’s Florence speech (in September) stated, it is in our interests to adopt a lot of the regulations which we played a large part in shaping over the last 40 years if we are to keep trading with our largest trading partner.”
In a co-ordinated move, Scottish Secretary David Mundell drove home Davidson’s message to the UK Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, telling fellow ministers there could be no Brexit deal that put the integrity of the United Kingdom at risk.
The Scots Tories at Westminster expressed “unanimous support” for Davidson’s message that the terms of any Brexit deal with the EU should be UK-wide.
Davidson also spoke twice to Foster, who on Monday vetoed a move by the Government to align Northern Ireland with the EU to avoid a hard border with Ireland.
By last night, Foster had still not taken a call from the PM to try to close the gap in Brexit negotiations.
She told RTE News that the text of the Irish border deal had come as a “big shock” when she saw it late on Monday morning as British and Irish officials were tying up loose ends ahead of May’s lunch meeting with EU Commission president JeanClaude Juncker.
She said: “Once we saw the text, we knew it was not going to be acceptable.”
Foster also said that when she talked to May on Monday, she said the DUP could not sign up to anything that would mean an effective border in the Irish Sea.
She added: “It could have been dealt with differently”.
Ten DUP MPs in Westminster provide May with her Commons majority and have the Prime Minister in a political headlock.
Davidson’s intervention was also designed to seize back the agenda from Nicola Sturgeon, who initially demanded Scotland be given a special Brexit deal of its own to mirror the Northern Ireland offer.
Sturgeon yesterday refined her stance and called for Labour to work with the SNP for a Brexit deal that could keep the UK in the single market and the customs union.
She tweeted: “This could be the moment for opposition and soft Brexit/remain Tories to force a different, less damaging approach – keep the UK in the single market and customs union.
“But it needs Labour to get its act together. How about it @jeremycorbyn?”
Labour’s leader was absent from the Brexit battle.
He sat in the Commons next to the party’s Shadow Brexit Minister, Keir Starmer, who said the talks were an embarrassment.
Starmer said: “It’s one thing to go to Brussels and fall out with those on the other side of the negotiating table.
“It’s another to go to Brussels and fall out with those supposedly on your own side.” Starmer called for remaining in the single
market and customs union to be “back on the table” in the Brexit negotiations and demanded the Government drop the “absurd” plan to leave the EU at the end of March 2019.
But Brexit Secretary David Davis hit back at Starmer, saying: “He said earlier this year that remaining in the single market would be interpreted as ‘not respecting’ the referendum result.
“The Shadow International Trade Secretary said that a permanent customs union is ‘deeply unattractive’. So much for Labour policy on this matter.”
Turning fire on the SNP, he accused Sturgeon of using the negotiations to bang the “tattered drum of independence”.
But as MPs from all sides piled in with warnings that a special deal for Northern Ireland endangered the UK, Davis said: “The presumption of the discussion was that everything we talked about applied to the whole United Kingdom.”
He added: “Alignment isn’t harmonisation, it isn’t having the same rules, it’s sometimes having mutually recognised rules, mutually recognised inspection. That’s what we’re aiming at.”
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds signalled his party wanted to see a “sensible Brexit” and would work as long as possible to get a deal.
But the gap between May and Foster was evident when Downing Street could not say when the Prime Minister would return to Brussels for further Brexit talks.
Juncker suggested a further meeting was expected “maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow, not on Friday and Saturday because I’m out of town, maybe on Sunday”.
It is in our interests to adopt regulations we played a large part in shaping TORY SOURCE