The Brexit mutineers
Remain-supporting Conservatives rebel against May’s move to enshrine in law the date Britain leaves EU
THERESA MAY is facing a rebellion from at least 15 Conservative MPS who are threatening to block her plans for Brexit in Parliament.
The group, which includes several former ministers, has informed senior party figures that it will join forces with Labour to block new measures that would enshrine the date of Brexit in law.
All the disaffected members, with the exception of Kenneth Clarke, voted to invoke Article 50, which gives Britain two years to leave the EU.
However, they are refusing to fix the date – giving rise to accusations of a “mutiny” that threatens to wipe out the Prime Minister’s majority and plunge the party into crisis.
Some of the MPS, who all backed Remain but mostly represent Leave constituencies, are understood to have had a “stormy” meeting with the whips earlier this week. They are braced to come under intense pressure to reverse their opposition before a key parliamentary vote next week.
Ministers have already announced a major concession by handing Parliament the opportunity to debate and vote on Britain’s final deal to leave the EU in 2019. David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, said that if MPS voted to reject the deal, Britain would simply depart without one.
However, there are fears among some Brexit-supporting Tories that if the date of Brexit is not written into law, there will be a last-minute attempt to keep Britain in the EU if Parliament rejects the final deal.
The extent of Tory divisions over Brexit was laid bare in the Commons yesterday as pro-european Conservative MPS condemned the Government’s plans – first revealed by The Daily Telegraph last Friday – as “mad”.
Bernard Jenkin, a senior Leave-supporting MP, said: “Anyone who voted for Article 50, but then does not wish to fix the date, they are open to the charge that they do not actually want us to leave the European Union.”
Sir Bill Cash, another prominent Eurosceptic Tory, accused Conservatives opposing the amendment of “collaborating” with Labour.
The “mutinous” MPS are led by Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, and include a total of seven former ministers and two select committee chairmen.
Among the most prominent members are Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary, Anna Soubry, a former minister, and Mr Clarke, the former chancellor.
MPS usually loyal to the Government – including Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, and Oliver Heald, a former solicitor general – are also in the group.
All voted for Britain to stay in the EU in the referendum but only Mr Clarke has said that he wants to reverse the result of the historic vote.
Labour yesterday announced that it would vote against the Government’s amendment, dismissing it as a “gimmick” and accusing the Prime Minister of “pandering” to Eurosceptics.
Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to oppose the amendment means the Government is likely to face defeat or will be forced to drop the measure, which specifies the time and date that Britain leaves the EU.
But there were also rifts on the Labour benches as Frank Field, a Eurosceptic MP, was heckled by his own benches for saying that his party “needs educating” about the fact that many of its voters back Brexit.
Labour MPS gave Mr Clarke an ovation as he concluded his speech by
saying after half a century of being loyal to his party, “I am the rebel”.
He said: “He [Sir Bill Cash] now represents orthodoxy, party loyalty. I’m the rebel. I espouse the policies that the Conservative Party has followed for the 50 years of my membership of it until we had a referendum 18 months ago. I regret I have not yet seen the light. There are some very, very, very serious issues to settled in this Bill.”
Mr Grieve said: “Everyone has got more and more brittle, more and more unwilling to listen … culminating last Friday with a mad amendment.”
Last night, 19 Labour MPS voted against repealing the European Communities Act of 1972, which takes Britain out of the European Union.
It came as George Freeman, a Conservative MP and former chairman of Mrs May’s policy board, was criticised by colleagues after suggesting that Brexit could turn Britain into an “old people’s home that can’t pay for itself ”.