NIC: IT’S WORTH ONE LAST TRY
BY TORCUIL CRICHTON NICOLA Sturgeon will meet Theresa May today in a last-ditch attempt to make the Prime Minister change her mind on Brexit.
With the Prime Minister’s EU deal facing all but certain defeat, Sturgeon is “going the extra mile” to persuade the Tory leader to change course, according to aides.
The meeting will be the First Minister’s second direct intervention in the Commons Brexit crisis ahead of the vote on May’s deal, which takes place in eight days.
Sturgeon’s talks with the PM two weeks ago came to nothing but a meeting with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn opened up the possibility of a Labour-SNP alliance to block Brexit.
There are no firm plans for a new meeting with Labour leaders today but Sturgeon will urge opposition parties to work together next Tuesday to block a no deal Brexit and to extend article 50, giving the Commons time to secure an alternative way forward.
A spokesman for the First Minister said it was obvious there was no majority in the Commons for May’s Brexit plan but that a no deal crash out of the EU had to be avoided.
However, the official held out little hope of a breakthrough.
He said: “What can you do but seek to convince and seek to persuade? The situation obiliges you to go the extra mile and get to a more sensible space.”
Sturgeon’s stop-off in London on her way to climate change talks in Poland came as May was warned her Government could be toppled if her deal is blocked.
Labour’s Keir Starmer yesterday served notice that opposition parties would combine to bring the Tory Government down with a motion of no confidence if May loses a Commons vote on her Brexit deal. The Shadow Brexit Secretary said: “If the Prime Minister has lost a vote of that sort of significance then there has to be a question of confidence in the Government. “I think it’s inevitable that we will seek to move that. “Obviously, it will depend on what actually happens, it will depend on what the response is. “But if she’s lost a vote of this significance after two years of negotiation then it is right that there should be a general election.”
Governments who lose a no confidence vote stand down and trigger a general election by convention but the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, for five-year terms, means the Tories could ride out the crisis.
Meanwhile, arch Brexiteer Michael Gove insisted the Government can win next Tuesday’s vote.
Gove, who stayed in the Cabinet despite having issues with the deal, told The Andrew Marr Show that winning would be “challenging”.
But he said the alternative was either “no deal or no Brexit”.
He added: “I reflected long and hard about this deal. I concluded, like lots of people, that while it is imperfect, it is the right thing to do.”
Gove acknowledged he was uncomfortable about the Northern Ireland “backstop” but said that if it was activated, it would be more uncomfortable for the EU.
He added: “We will have tariff-free access to their markets without paying a penny.”
He dismissed a claim by French president Emmanuel Macron that the EU would use the backstop to extract concessions from Britain over access to fisheries.
Gove said: “He doesn’t have us over a barrel. We have got him over a barrel of herring and a barrel of mackerel.
“He wants that access to our waters. We can sit in the backstop and say, ‘No, absolutely not’.”
We have Macron over a barrel of herring MICHAEL GOVE
Sturgeon to meet May in desperate bid to alter course before vote