May survives Davis threat to quit, yet is still at mercy of Boris
THERESA MAY’S Government was left teetering on the brink of collapse by a resignation pact between David Davis and his two most senior Brexit ministers, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.
The Brexit Secretary had agreed with Steve Baker and Suella Braverman that all three would quit on Thursday if Theresa May did not make concessions over her backstop plan to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland.
Government sources have described a “tinderbox” atmosphere in which “it felt, for the first time, as if it could all have toppled”.
The maelstrom created by Boris Johnson’s leaked comments on Brexit might ultimately have helped the Prime Minister by diverting attention away from one of her most dangerous moments in power.
And whether by luck or design, Mrs May has allowed the immediate storm to blow out among both Leavers and Remainers, improving her chances of victory when the EU Withdrawal Bill returns to Parliament next week.
The Government must find the numbers to defeat 15 House of Lords amendments to the Bill, and Conservative whips are increasingly confident that they can carry the day.
A week that threatened to run out of control began with a classic piece of politicking as Mrs May gave Remain supporting Cabinet ministers first sight of her revised plan for avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland last Sunday. It would keep the whole of the UK aligned to the customs union for a “time limited” period if Britain fails to reach a customs deal with the EU.
Crucially, the document was also briefed to key Remain-supporting MPS by Gavin Barwell, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, as part of a strategy to keep them onside ahead of next week’s vote. Leave supporters in the Cabinet who asked to see the document were told it was “not ready” for circulation.
Inevitably, Brexiteer ministers cried foul, but that was a risk Mrs May had already weighed up: over Easter her aides “war-gamed” how ministers would react to various Brexit compromises, and had no doubt come to the conclusion that it would take more than just this to prompt the resignation of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove or Liam Fox.
One Brexiteer who was shown the document, however, was David Davis, and he did not like what he saw.
With no date mentioned in the paper for when the backstop would expire, it did not appear to be “time limited” at all. The Daily Telegraph has learnt that the Brexit department was so angry that Mr Davis, Mr Baker and Mrs Braverman, his under-secretaries of state, all resolved to resign if Mrs May did not agree to put an end date in the document. One friend said the ministers were faced with a choice between “serving the Government and staying true to what they stand for in politics”.
On Thursday morning Mr Davis confronted Mrs May in her office behind the House of Commons, spending a full hour airing his grievances, which were numerous.
A source said one of the main arguments was about who was in charge of the Brexit negotiations – Mr Davis or Olly Robbins, the Prime Minister’s Europe adviser.
The source said: “David needs to show he has the authority as an elected and accountable person, leading these discussions, and has the backing of the Prime Minister.”
One MP said: “The Prime Minister regards anything that emerges from Olly Robbins’s lips as a holy writ. She is 100 per cent reliant on Robbins and for some reason she regards him as the oracle.” Mrs May was unaware that three Brexit ministers were on the brink of quitting, but Mr Davis left her in no doubt that he regarded the backstop plan as a resignation matter.
“The situation felt more delicate than at any time since Theresa May took over,” a Government source said yesterday. “It could all have toppled if David Davis hadn’t pulled back from resigning.”
Boris Johnson and Liam Fox also saw the Prime Minister for individual meetings that morning, pressing home the point that they would never accept an open-ended backstop. Mrs May added a few words to the backstop plan saying the Government “expected” its successor agreement to be in place by the end of December 2021, allowing Mr Davis to claim a victory while allowing Remainers to claim he had been “stitched up” because the end date was not binding.
As a result, when the Cabinet’s Brexit “war committee” met at lunchtime on Thursday, the backstop plan was waved through. When Mrs May boarded her jet bound for the G7 summit in Canada on Thursday afternoon, she felt that the crisis had passed. But where Harold Macmillan was always at the mercy of “events”, Theresa May is always at the mercy of Boris.
By the time Mrs May had landed in Quebec, The Telegraph and other newspapers had redrawn their front pages following an online leak of the Foreign Secretary’s comments at a private dinner, in which he suggested Mrs May needed to show more “guts” in the Brexit negotiations and suggested that Donald Trump might do a better job.
‘The situation felt more delicate than at any time since Theresa May took over. It could all have toppled’