May: ‘It’s my deal or no deal when it comes to Brexit’
THERESA MAY appeared to abandon the option of a no-deal Brexit yesterday as she suggested the only alternative to the proposed Withdrawal Agreement was “no Brexit at all”.
The Prime Minister avoided using the phrase “no deal” as she answered a Parliamentary question on whether she agreed there were “no circumstances” in which the UK would crash out of the EU. It came after two Cabinet ministers made similar statements in what seemed a coordinated attempt to warn rebel MPS they would scupper Brexit if they did not back the deal on offer.
Mrs May has, until now, always maintained that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, but with dozens of Tory MPS indicating they will vote against the deal currently on offer, the Prime Minister changed tack yesterday.
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, asked her at Prime Minister’s Questions whether she agreed with her ministers that “there are no circumstances under which Britain would leave with no deal?”
Mrs May responded: “The point that has been made by a number of my colleagues in relation to the vote that will come before this House on a meaningful vote on a deal from the European Union is very simple.
“If you look at the alternative to having that deal with the European Union it will either be more uncertainty, more division or it could risk no Brexit at all.”
It came after Amber Rudd, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said Parliament would not allow Britain to leave without a deal.
She told the BBC: “It is my view that the House of Commons will stop no deal. There isn’t a majority in the House of Commons to allow that to take place.”
She said she expected MPS to back Mrs May’s plan after peering into the “abyss” and pulling back. But she added: “If it doesn’t get through, anything could happen. The Brexiteers may lose their Brexit.”
Anti-brexit groups seized on the comments, with the People’s Vote campaign claiming Ms Rudd had “torpedoed the PM’S threat of no deal”.
Liz Truss, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: “If my colleagues in Parliament don’t vote for this then we’re in grave danger of not leaving at all.”
Leo Varadkar, the Irish Taoiseach, cast doubt on whether no deal was a viable concept, telling the Irish parliament: “Nobody knows for sure what would happen in a no-deal scenario where the UK crashed out of the European Union without a deal.”
In such a scenario Mr Varadkar said negotiating teams would have to try to agree an arrangement to avoid a hard border. “Nobody knows how long that no deal would last,” he said. “We would find ourselves having to negotiate a nodeal deal quite soon thereafter.”