WE’RE ON A NO DEAL KNIFE EDGE
May in dramatic TV plea to salvage Brexit deal ++ She warns MPs: Britain’s had enough ++ Corbyn flounces out of crunch talks ++ And EU’s latest ultimatum means...
THERESA May last night told MPs to end their ‘political games’ and deliver Brexit. With the UK just eight days from a No deal departure, she went on live TV to condemn the Commons for failing to back her EU withdrawal agreement. The Prime Minister will travel to Brussels today to ask for an extension until the end of June to try to get her plan through. she said the delay to the planned March 29 exit date, which she had promised to keep more than 100 times in Parliament, was ‘a matter of great personal regret’.
she hinted she would rather quit or leave with No deal than allow delay ‘to give more time for politicians to argue’. donald Tusk had raised the stakes by warning an extension to article 50 would be agreed only if MPs
approved her deal. This opened up the possibility that the UK could leave without a deal next Friday.
‘I believe that a short extension would be possible,’ said Mr Tusk, who is president of the European Council.
‘But it would be conditional on a positive vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons.’
He said the hopes of a deal now seemed ‘frail, even illusory’ but said the EU would not give up. He suggested an emergency Brussels summit could be held at the end of next week, just hours before Britain is due to leave, to consider offering the UK a much longer extension – at a price.
Government sources last night indicated Mrs May would make a third – and probably final – attempt to persuade MPs to approve her deal next week, possibly as soon as Monday.
Speaking 1,000 days after the UK voted to leave the EU, Mrs May warned MPs they would never be forgiven if they failed to deliver Brexit.
Addressing the public directly, she said: ‘Of this I am absolutely sure, you the public have had enough, you are tired of the infighting, you are tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real con-
‘Talking about nothing else’
cerns about our children’s schools, our National Health Service, knife crime. You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with.’
Ministers still hope they can win the backing of the DUP and persuade more moderate Eurosceptics to back the deal. But they have all but abandoned hope of persuading the two dozen Brexit hardliners holding out for No Deal.
Instead they are focusing on Labour MPs, particularly those in Leave-supporting areas, who they believe might reluctantly back Mrs May’s plan rather than allow the UK to crash out next week.
Last night some MPs suggested her comments could backfire, with one warning they could spark attacks on MPs.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson is urging Mrs May to give Tory MPs a free vote next week in the hope of making it easier for Labour MPs to vote for the deal. In other developments: Jeremy Corbyn walked out of cross-party crisis talks with the Prime Minister last night in protest at the presence of exLabour MP Chuka Umunna;
Reports from France suggested President Emmanuel Macron is ready to veto any request for a Brexit delay, meaning the UK will leave on March 29 with or without a deal;
Arch Remainer Dominic Grieve said he was ‘ashamed’ to be a Conservative and warned: ‘We are going to spiral down into oblivion and the worst part of it all is that we will deserve it’;
Mrs May held talks with opposition leaders in the hope of securing their support for a deal next week to prevent the UK crashing out;
The European Parliament’s Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt said: ‘The only relevant question now is if Prime Minister May can muster a crossparty majority by next week’;
The Liberal Democrats and SNP called for Parliament to prepare to revoke Article 50 ‘as a last resort’;
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker warned that the UK would have to hold elections to the European parliament if it wanted to delay beyond May 23;
Tory hardliners called for the Prime Minister to resign, with Peter Bone accusing her to her face of ‘betraying the British people’;
A SkyData poll found that 90 per cent of voters believe the Brexit negotiations have been a ‘national humiliation’.
Mrs May’s decision to rule out a long delay stunned Cabinet Remainers who believed she was ready to sign up to the proposal in order to remove the risk of No Deal. The decision was taken by the PM in the early hours of yesterday and released to the media before ministers were told.
It came a week after her deputy David Lidington told MPs: ‘A short one-off extension would be downright reckless.’
A senior Remainer accused Mrs May of caving in to Brexiteer Cabinet ministers, who had threatened to quit rather than allow a long delay. The minister said: ‘No Deal has got more likely. The ERG hardliners are never going to vote for it now because they have got the prospect of No Deal.’
Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of the Conservatives, said: ‘Why are we on bended knee to the EU begging for things we don’t need?
‘Next week should be a simple choice between her deal and No Deal. If it isn’t then it will be a national humiliation.’
Another former leader, William Hague, warned that the chances of an imminent election were rising fast.
He also warned of a ‘longer and longer’ delay to Brexit.
Peter Oborne and Comment – Page 18