Brexit in doubt as May mired in Irish border row

THERESA MAY goes into a crunch meeting with EU leaders today admitting she is yet to find an answer to the Irish border problem. And a Cabinet minister has suggested for the first time that Brexit might not happen.

The Prime Minister has until tonight to meet an EU deadline for Britain to make “satisfactory progress” on the issues of money, citizens’ rights and Ireland in order to trigger trade talks later this month.

She had hoped today’s meetings in Brussels with Jean-claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, and Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, would be the moment when trade talks would be unlocked, but government sources were highly pessimistic about the prospect of a breakthrough, leaving the entire Brexit timetable in jeopardy.

The news came as Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, told Conservative rebels that if they did not back Mrs May in the negotiations, “we will have no Brexit”.

An official government statement said there were “plenty of discussions still to go” and downplayed the importance of today’s meeting, describing it only as “an important staging post” on the way to trade talks.

However, with just 10 days to go until next week’s European Council summit, when EU leaders will decide whether trade talks can begin, Mrs May is rapidly running out of time to keep Brexit on track.

With no agreement in sight between London, Dublin and Belfast on the border issue, the Prime Minister is likely to ask for a last-minute extension to today’s deadline.

Whitehall sources bitterly complained last night that Leo Varadkar, the Irish premier, had “moved the goalposts” by insisting on guarantees over the future border arrangements now, having earlier said the issue could be thrashed out once trade talks were under way.

Ireland is holding out for an assurance that it will have “regulatory convergence” with Northern Ireland, effectively meaning the border would move to the Irish Sea.

But the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), on which Mrs May relies for her Parliamentary majority, says it will not accept anything that is similar to staying in the customs union or the single market.

One government source said there was “absolutely no prospect” of ministers going against the DUP’S wishes, adding: “The things that the Irish government wants us to sign up to are things that no British government could sign up to.”

Mr Hunt’s warning is aimed at Tory backbenchers who have hinted that they would vote against a deal that involved paying £40billion or more for the Brexit bill or that gave the European Court of Justice any powers in British law after Brexit.

Such a scenario would risk ousting Mrs May from Downing Street and triggering a general election that could, if Jeremy Corbyn

emerged as the victor, result in Labour calling a halt to Brexit. Mr Corbyn said over the weekend that he had not yet decided whether Labour would hold a second referendum on Brexit if the party gained power.

Mr Hunt is the first Cabinet minister to raise the prospect that Brexit might not happen, and his comments reflected nervousness in Tory ranks as today’s meeting approached. Mrs May will travel to Brussels with David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, who will meet Michel Barnier, the EU’S chief Brexit negotiator.

Mr Barnier will compile a report on Wednesday on whether “sufficient progress” has been made, which will be sent to the leaders of the other 27 EU member states before they meet at the EU Council on Dec 14 and 15.

Mrs May is desperate for the EU Council to agree that trade talks can begin, as any further delay would mean talks were unlikely to start before March, when the council next meets – a full year after Article 50 was triggered and only 12 months before Britain formally leaves the EU.

She may now ask Mr Barnier to delay today’s deadline by 24 hours, though Whitehall sources said they believed they had until the date of the EU Council meeting to solve the Irish border issue. Ireland is threatening to veto trade talks unless Britain guarantees there will be no hard border, but Nigel Dodds, the DUP leader in Parliament, said any solution that involved an allireland customs regime would force Northern Ireland “further and further away” from its main market, the UK.

He said the Irish government had adopted an “aggressive stance” on Brexit which was “causing real damage to Anglo-irish relations”.

He added: “They can’t impose what is a good solution for the Irish Republic on the rest of us.”

Asked if the DUP might threaten to withdraw support for Mrs May’s Government, he said: “The DUP doesn’t need to issue any threats whatsoever, because we’re very, very clear that the Government understands that anything that results in the undermining of the Union … we wouldn’t go with that.”

Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister and deputy prime minister, was equally firm, telling the BBC: “We cannot allow some kind of collateral damage or unintended consequence of Brexit to have the re-creation of a border.”