Senior Tory calls for new referendum over Brexit

Greening labels Chequers plan ‘worst of both worlds’ as PM reveals that Trump told her to sue the EU

Anna Mikhailova Christopher Hope

JUSTINE GREENING became the first senior Conservative to back calls for a second Brexit referendum last night, as Theresa May faced a battle with her own MPS and grassroots Tories over her Chequers proposal.

The former education secretary, who campaigned to remain in the EU, said that Theresa May’s Brexit deal was “the worst of both worlds” and would ultimately satisfy no one. She told The Times: “The only solution is to take the final Brexit decision out of the hands of the deadlocked politicians.”

Mrs May was already facing opposition from grassroots Tories over the proposals yesterday, as she revealed that Donald Trump had told her to sue the EU to get the best Brexit deal.

The Prime Minister disclosed the president’s advice about negotiating a Brexit deal, given during her visit to the White House in January last year, in a BBC interview.

Mr Trump had told reporters during his visit to the UK last week: “I did give her a suggestion, I wouldn’t say advice, and I think she found it maybe too brutal. Maybe someday she’ll do that. If they don’t make the right deal she might very well do what I suggested she might want to do.” Yesterday, Mrs May told The Andrew Marr Show: “He told me I should sue the EU. Not go into negotiations, sue them.” She added: “What the president also said at that press conference was don’t walk away, don’t walk away from the negotiations because then you’re stuck.”

Experts said Mr Trump was correct to say that legal action was an option – but there was doubt whether it would succeed. Mrs May faced dissent from both sides of the Tory Party yesterday, after Robert Courts, an unpaid ministerial aide at the Foreign Office, quit the Government, saying he could not look himself in the mirror if he stayed on in his role.

Mr Courts said he would join other Tory MPS like Lee Rowley to vote for amendments tabled by the Eurosceptic European Research Group of Tory MPS to Brexit legislation later today.

Brandon Lewis, the party Chairman, and Gavin Barwell, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, hosted a conference call with senior members of the voluntary party to gauge the mood among the grassroots about the Brexit plans.

Senior Conservatives will be worried that MPS will return from their constituencies today having been confronted by angry activists and determined to get the Prime Minister to water down her Chequers deal.

Jacob Rees-mogg, the chairman of the European Research Group, blamed

‘The only solution is to take the final Brexit decision out of the hands of the deadlocked politicians’

Mrs May personally, accusing her of being “a Remainer who has remained a Remainer”.”

“The Government unfortunately believes that Brexit is not a good thing in itself,” he told the BBC’S Sunday Politics show. “It seems to think it has to be tempered with non-brexit.” Eurosceptic Conservative MPS have set up a “party within a party” with a highly organised whipping operation to try to frustrate Mrs May’s Brexit plans.

More than 100 Eurosceptic Tory MPS are on a Whatsapp group coordinated by Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister, who is giving them voting instructions. One Eurosceptic source told The Daily Telegraph: “If she wants to start a civil war in the Conservative Party, this is what is going to happen.”

SIR – Having been born in 1956, I spent the whole of my young life being told that the job of government was to manage Britain’s economic, political and military decline.

That mindset led to us joining the European Economic Community, as it then was, to give us protection and support in our decline. Margaret Thatcher came along in 1979 and changed all that. We rediscovered ourselves, and the change in our national outlook and in the country was enormous.

If handled properly, Brexit is probably the most exciting event to happen to this country in my lifetime. We have broken free and we need to grab every opportunity given to us.

TD Hopkinson Sawley, Lancashire

SIR – I suggest two questions that should be applied to Theresa May’s Brexit proposals. First, what will the UK be able to do after Brexit that it cannot do as a member of the EU?

And, secondly: what will the UK still have to do after Brexit that it has to do now as a member of the EU? Alan Hawkes Saffron Walden, Essex

SIR – One positive thing about the Brexit White Paper is that, should the tide ever turn in favour of our being part of the EU again, we could rejoin seamlessly. Patricia Ellman Cambridge

SIR – Theresa May did not kill the Brexit dream. It was killed by EU negotiators, happy to damage their own economies so long as greater damage was inflicted on the British economy. The death was confirmed by the Labour Party, whose about-turn on Brexit ensured that a clean break would never be accepted by Parliament.

Theresa May has to deal with these realities and I, for one, am pleased to see Brexit proposals which have a chance of succeeding.

Jonathan Rowe London NW4

SIR – The Government has not handled the exit negotiations well. However, in defence of Theresa May and her ministers, I would say that these negotiations are of unparalleled complexity and that the task has been complicated significantly because everything is carried out in the full glare of publicity.

Whether we like it or not, over the past 40 years or so supply chains have developed across Europe that depend upon swift movement of goods between countries, including Britain. In some cases I’m sure it will be possible to make alternative supply chain arrangements, but at worst this will not be possible and at best it will take time.

Businesses involved in imports and exports need to be confident that on March 30 2019 they will be able to trade with the EU in a way that is as close as possible to the terms that existed on March 29. If not, the jobs of many British workers will be at risk. John Quinn

Gloucester

SIR – In the Seventies, as a keen radio ham, I made for myself a small unit to improve the clarity of speech, which plugged in to a popular transmitter. I got positive feedback from other radio hams, so I started making the speech processors and selling them in Britain.

Soon the news got around, and I sold hundreds worldwide. I did not make a fortune out of the idea, but it brought in much needed cash, generated valuable publicity for my small business, and demonstrated to a leading ham radio equipment manufacturer a simple way of improving their equipment.

I am long since retired, but it is now not possible for a single individual to innovate and sell small quantities of electronic equipment in this way, as even selling a few units on the British market requires that the equipment complies with EU regulations. The time, effort and expense involved in achieving such compliance is just too much for one person to handle.

Harry Leeming

Morecambe, Lancashire