RUTH: I’LL QUIT OVER BAD DEAL

Scotland’s top Tory issues ultimatum to Mrs May, warning separate Brexit accord for NI risks break-up of Britain

RUTH Davidson has made an extraordinary threat to resign if Theresa May’s Brexit deal divides Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.

The Scottish Conservative leader feels so strongly about the danger to the Union from any separate deal for Northern Ireland that she would be prepared to walk away from her job in protest.

Scottish Secretary David Mundell – one of the longest-serving members of the Cabinet – would also be prepared to resign.

The pair have written to the Prime Minister to warn her they will not support any deal that ‘creates a border of any kind in the Irish Sea and undermines the Union’.

The fear is that a separate deal for Northern Ireland would be seized upon by the SNP, which wants Scotland to remain within the EU single market and customs union.

A senior Scottish Conservative source said: ‘Any differentiated deal that puts a hard border down the Irish Sea they consider a resigning matter.’

The remarkable threat to quit by Scotland’s two most senior Tories put huge pressure on Mrs May to ensure that the deal she strikes does not put the UK’s future in peril.

It came as the Brexit talks appeared to be

deadlocked last night after the EU rebuffed Mrs May’s demand for a ‘break clause’ to prevent the UK being locked in the customs union for ever.

Talks between Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and his EU counterpart Michel Barnier broke up inconclusively after just over an hour.

EU diplomats had briefed that a deal would be completed yesterday, apparently confident the UK would back down. But with several Cabinet ministers threatening to resign unless Mrs May secures a ‘get-out clause’ from the Irish backstop plan, Mr Raab was ordered to hold the line.

The impasse means that, with only 48 hours to go before an EU summit designed to agree the UK’s exit terms, hopes of a deal remain on a knife-edge.

Failure to strike a deal this week would pile pressure on Mrs May to abandon her Chequers proposals and seek another strategy.

Government sources warned the two sides still have ‘big issues to overcome’ but no further talks are scheduled for today or tomorrow.

Northern Ireland will be the only part of the UK which will share a land border with an EU country – the Irish Republic – when Brexit formally happens. Trade between the two countries is crucial and one solution mooted by some in the EU has been for Northern Ireland to remain in the single market and customs union when the UK leaves.

But that could mean the UK creating a border with Northern Ireland, with customs checks taking place at ports such as Cairnryan in Wigtownshire.

Miss Davidson and Mr Mundell made their strong views known to Mrs May in a joint letter.

It said: ‘Having fought just four years ago to keep our country together, the integrity of our United Kingdom remains the single most important issue for us in these negotiations.

‘Any deal that delivers a differentiated settlement for Northern Ireland beyond the differences that already exist on an all Ireland basis, or can be brought under the provisions of the Belfast Agreement, would undermine the integrity of our UK internal market and this United Kingdom.’

It adds: ‘We could not support any deal that creates a border of any kind in the Irish Sea and undermines the Union or leads to Northern Ireland having a differ-- ent relationship with the EU than the rest of the UK, beyond what currently exists.’

Miss Davidson has previously vowed to oppose any deal that offers ‘special status’ to Northern Ireland. Last December, she said that ‘no government of the Conservative and Unionist Party should countenance any deal that compromises the political, economic or constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom’.

A source close to Miss Davidson said: ‘It is a red line that we do not have new barriers between Northern Ireland and mainland GB.’

Nicola Sturgeon said on Twitter that Miss Davidson’s and Mr Mundell’s positions were ‘bizarre’.

On the BBC’s Sunday Politics Scotland, Constitution Secretary Michael Russell said: ‘If we see differentiation in one place but not in another then there will be damage done to Scotland.

‘We support very strongly sorting out the situation in Northern Ireland in a way that there is not violence, there is not a return to the problems of the past. But we also support Scotland being treated in a way that it needs to be treated in order to move forward.’

On the suggestion that Miss Davidson and Mr Mundell may resign if Northern Ireland is treated differently, Mr Russell said: ‘This is an astonishing development, not that Ruth Davidson holds any position in the UK Government.

‘To say you will resign if Scotland is not treated as badly as everywhere else strikes me as a complete dereliction of duty. They are elected by people in Scotland and yet they want Scotland to suffer the hardest of Brexits. That strikes me as a ludicrous position.’

DAVID Davis exhorts the Cabinet to rise up in mutiny to block it. Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster threatens to sabotage the forthcoming Budget over it.

Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson and Scottish Secretary David Mundell are among several senior figures ready to quit rather than accept it. And Boris Johnson darkly warns it will provoke the greatest political crisis since Suez.

Was there ever so much sound and fury, such an outpouring of self-righteous indignation, over something no one has even seen yet?

This, of course, is the Brexit agreement Theresa May is working to finalise this week. There has been speculation it could divide Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, see us tied to the customs union indefinitely and, to use Jacob Rees-Mogg’s melodramatic phrase, turn us into a ‘vassal state’.

There’s no doubt these are critical days for Britain’s future. But before trashing the Prime Minister’s proposals, shouldn’t the critics actually look at them first? Doesn’t she deserve at least that courtesy – especially from those supposed to be on her side?

Yes, Miss Davidson and Mr Mundell are right to warn of the dangers to the Union of a Northern Ireland deal which could give succour to Nationalists desperate for any excuse to break up the UK. But resignation ultimatums so soon?

Meanwhile among Brexiteers, the truth is that far too many Tories are putting ego and personal ambition before their party and their nation.

With so much division in the country and in Parliament, constant stonewalling from Brussels and the Government reliant on the DUP for its majority, Mrs May’s task of honouring the referendum result by guiding Britain out of the EU is daunting enough.

Yet instead of trying to help, Mr Davis and Mr Johnson are doing everything in their power to undermine her. Worse still, they claim to be simply defending the democratic will of the people, when everyone knows they are vying to become the Eurosceptic choice in a future Tory leadership contest.

Ironically, Mrs May has received succour from unlikely quarters in recent days. Caroline Flint became the latest Labour MP to say she could be prepared to defy her party leadership and vote with the Government if it can come up with a ‘reasonable’ Brexit deal.

German business leaders are demanding ‘constructive action’ from EU negotiators to avoid the ‘horror scenario’ of no deal. They recognise that if Michel Barnier and his team continue to stonewall, no deal is exactly where we will end up.

So yes, the Brussels bully boys must realise that dogmatic intransigence is not an option. But Tory rebels must also wake up to reality.

Destabilising the Prime Minister at this crucial time could have truly dire consequences – chaos at Westminster, a possible general election and the prospect of ushering in a Marxist Labour government.

Are the hard Brexiteers really so vain and so irresponsible that they would risk inflicting that disaster on their country?