Cabinet resigned to Brexit deal defeat

No10 prepares for third vote on plan as ministers fail to win backstop breakthrough

THERESA MAY’S Cabinet expects her Brexit deal to be defeated by up to 100 votes next week, after talks in Brussels collapsed without progress yesterday.

Downing Street is already making plans for a third “meaningful vote” on the deal, on the assumption Tuesday’s Commons vote will be lost, and Mrs May is considering making a speech tomorrow to plead for support from MPS.

One minister said it appeared “certain” the deal would fail to pass, and Mrs May’s next move would depend upon the scale of the defeat.

Julian Smith, the Chief Whip, warned MPS their Easter break could be cancelled if Brexit was delayed, adding to the growing sense of inevitability that Parliament will reject the deal and vote to extend Article 50. If MPS vote to delay Brexit until June, as is thought most likely, it would leave only three months to find a way forward, meaning they could not afford the 18-day break.

Mrs May was defeated by a record margin of 230 when MPS voted on her Brexit deal in January. Her advisers believe that if she can limit the margin of defeat in the next vote to fewer than 60 MPS, she would stand a chance of winning a third vote. But some ministers believe the majority against her will be as high as 100, leaving the Prime Minister in serious difficulty.

If her deal is defeated on Tuesday, Mrs May has promised that MPS will be able to vote on whether to keep a nodeal Brexit on the table on Wednesday, and on whether to delay Brexit on Thursday. No 10 has so far refused to say whether Tory MPS will be whipped to keep no-deal or to block a Brexit delay, or even how the Prime Minister would herself vote.

Yesterday, the chance of the Commons agreeing to the deal became less likely when Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, and Stephen Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, returned from Brussels empty-handed after talks with Michel Barnier, the EU’S chief Brexit negotiator.

Mr Cox had gone to Belgium to negotiate changes to the Northern Ireland backstop in the EU Withdrawal Agreement, the biggest stumbling block to getting the deal through Parliament.

He presented two ideas to Mr Barnier: an arbitration panel that would decide if the UK and the EU were acting in good faith over the backstop, and a new “mini-backstop” that would limit its scope to border infrastructure only. Mr Cox’s arbitration panel was described as an attempt to make it easier for the UK to exit a backstop by introducing terms such as “reasonableness” to determine whether the two sides were acting in good faith.

However, Mr Barnier rejected both plans, as a leaked note of the meeting criticised Mr Cox for trying to find “a legal solution to a political problem”.

Margaritis Schinas, the European Commission’s chief spokesman, said: “Discussions have been difficult. No so- lution has been identified that is consistent with the Withdrawal Agreement including the protocol on Northern Ireland which, as you all know, will not be

reopened.” As he left Brussels, Mr Cox said the two sides exchanged “robust, strong views”. Last week’s optimism that Parliament could coalesce around a deal appeared to evaporate with Whitehall sources suggesting Mrs May, who had been expected to go to Brussels on Sunday to sign off a new agreement, might not make the trip at all.

Mr Cox and Mr Barclay are on standby to return to Brussels tomorrow, but only if officials continuing negotiations today make a breakthrough.

The EU remains opposed to a time limit on the backstop, designed to prevent a hard border in Ireland if a trade deal cannot be agreed, or giving the UK a unilateral exit mechanism from it.

Sources in Brussels suggest the UK will be offered a hardening of the language over an independent arbitration system that would decide whether the backstop should come to an end but Brexiteers have already made it clear that they would need far more before they would consider backing a deal.

Mrs May will go on with Tuesday’s vote even if she gets no concessions from Brussels by Monday, regarded as the final day a deal could be agreed.

Last night the House of Lords added to her problems by voting for a customs union, defeating the Government 207141 in an amendment to the Trade Bill. It means Mrs May must now overturn the amendment in the Commons if she is to avoid being forced into a customs union against her will. One minister described a “bunker mentality” settling on Downing Street as Mrs May chose to devote part of this week’s Cabinet meeting to discussing homelessness when Britain is less than a week from what could be its biggest political crisis in decades.

Ministers believe Mrs May will offer a free vote on blocking a no-deal exit, as she would face mass resignations from either wing of the party if she ordered MPS to keep no-deal or block it.

If, as expected, Parliament votes to block no-deal, she would almost certainly whip MPS to vote for a delay so she could claim to have ended the week with a win, if the vote goes her way.

The Government is expecting Labour and Tory rebels to try to seize control of the Brexit process by tabling amendments to all three votes next week that could, if successful, change the entire course of Brexit. Labour will table an amendment calling for a second referendum, while others are expected to call for a customs union with the EU and the right for MPS to take control of Parliamentary business.

Separately, economists from the Munich-based IFO Institute for Economic Research estimated that a “hard but smart” no-deal Brexit would cost Britain 0.5 per cent of its GDP, with Ireland hit 10 times as hard, with a 5 per cent drop in GDP.