EU ready to charge £1bn a month for Brexit delay
May faces punishment measures and a possible leadership challenge this week
THE EU is preparing to charge Britain billions of pounds and impose a number of other punitive conditions as its price for agreeing a Brexit delay if Theresa May is forced to ask for an extension this week.
Member states are “hardening” their attitudes towards a delay and will demand “legal and financial conditions” including a multi-billion pound increase to the £39billion divorce payment, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.
With no signs of a breakthrough in the negotiations, Parliament is expected to reject the deal for a second time tomorrow, before voting later in the week to extend Article 50.
EU sources suggested last night that the only way for Mrs May to win the vote was if she found her “inner Churchill” and reached out across the political divide for cross-party support.
The Prime Minister faces a possible no-confidence vote tabled by Labour if she loses heavily tomorrow, and a leadership challenge as Tory MPS warn her position would become increasingly untenable if she lost control of Brexit.
Boris Johnson, the runaway favourite among Tory members to succeed Mrs May, today accuses the EU of treating Britain with “contempt” and expecting it to sign up to a “Carthaginian” deal. He urges his fellow MPS to vote against both the deal and a delay, to force the EU to come to the table when its leaders meet on March 21.
Writing in The Telegraph, he says MPS must vote to keep no-deal on the table as “it is vital that we do nothing to further weaken the UK position”.
Mrs May spent her weekend frantically calling European leaders and backbench MPS to beg them for help.
She invited Eurosceptics to Chequers on Saturday and spent Sunday calling other Brexiteers, asking what would make them vote for her deal.
Downing Street said it remained possible that Mrs May could fly to Brussels this morning to agree new terms if a compromise was found overnight.
However, Michel Barnier, the EU chief negotiator, spent yesterday watching the Six Nations rugby, while Donald Tusk, the European Council president, posted a picture of himself with his “English friend” – an English Springer Spaniel – in what was interpreted as an attempt to goad Mrs May.
With hopes of a deal running out, attention in Brussels has already turned to the logistics of extending Article 50, and the price that can be extracted from Britain for agreeing to it.
All 27 member states must agree to an extension but EU sources said while Britain was likely to be granted a delay, it would come with strings attached. One diplomatic source told The Telegraph: “Lines are hardening against extension... Anything more than a few weeks will come with legal and financial conditions attached.”
Sources said Britain would be expected to pay another £13.5billion per year, with a delay of even three months adding billions to the bill.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has hinted that he would push for the UK to stay in a customs union, saying that he would only accept an extension if it accepted a “new choice”.
Another EU diplomat said Mrs May’s only hope now was to reach out across the Commons to find a deal that could command cross-party support – a veiled reference to a customs union.
The source said: “The EU27 are leaning towards a shorter extension to avoid ... Britain [being] involved in European elections in June. Unless things move that would mean the UK Government being at the table with a stable majority, which means a coalition that can deliver and reach across the [party] divide. She needs to summon her inner Churchill and reach across.”
THERESA MAY is facing increasing pressure to resign within weeks after it was claimed she has lost the backing of all but two of her Cabinet ministers.
The Prime Minister has already said she will not contest the 2022 general election, but her ministers want her gone by July so that a new leader can conduct the next phase of the Brexit negotiations, should Britain avoid a no-deal exit.
Members of the Cabinet have privately discussed whether they should tell her at the end of this week that her time is up, after what is expected to be a series of disastrous votes in Parliament. Mrs May is expected to lose tomorrow’s vote on her Brexit deal, with MPS expected to block a no-deal Brexit in another vote the following day.
Parliament will then vote on whether to delay Brexit, which Eurosceptics have warned would hand the reins to the EU and make Mrs May’s position untenable. She could even be gone by Wednesday night if Labour tables – and wins – a fresh no-confidence vote in the Government, which Downing Street fears could happen.
Her main rivals have been preparing their leadership bids for months, with Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary, making a speech today about the need for a “second-chance society” as part of his ongoing attempt to prove he is ready for the job.
Jeremy Hunt, Boris Johnson, Sajid Javid and Liz Truss have also been sounding out MPS to gauge support.
Asked yesterday whether Mrs May would still be PM at Christmas, Mr Raab told Sky News: “I don’t know. She said she’s going to step down, I would like to see her be able to do that in a way which is on terms of her own choosing, but I think the Government has found itself in a precarious situation and particularly I think if the Government extends Article 50 or tries to reverse, effectively, the Brexit promises that we’ve made, I think that situation will get even trickier.”
Former education secretary Nicky Morgan said Mrs May’s position “is
‘Government has found itself in a precarious position ... I would say there are only two ministers in the Cabinet who still support her. Everyone else has lost faith’
going to become slowly less and less tenable” if her Brexit policy is “dismantled” by Parliament.
She said: “If the votes go in a way which means that the Prime Minister’s policy, as she has set out and stuck to rigidly over the course of the last two-and-a-bit a years, is taken away, I think it would be very difficult for the Prime Minister to stay in office for very much longer.”
Mrs Morgan said it may be up to the Cabinet to tell Mrs May that the time has come for her to go. She said: “They are going to have to take a role in saying potentially to the Prime Minister ‘Actually, things have changed significantly. We think you should think about your position Prime Minister’.”
One Cabinet source told The Daily Telegraph: “I would say there are only two ministers in the Cabinet who still support her. Everyone else has lost faith in her ability to lead.”
Mrs May faces significant hurdles in the weeks ahead. If she is forced to ask the EU for a Brexit delay later this week she will have to abandon her promise to voters that Britain will leave the EU on March 29 – something she has always insisted was written in stone.
With no signs of a deal on the horizon that could command a majority in the Commons, and also the support of the EU, Mrs May would then face months of further negotiations which could end up with the UK being in exactly the same place as it is now.
She then faces the prospect of a swathe of Tory council seats being lost in the local elections in May, which many backbench Conservatives believe will be the moment support for her finally runs out.
However, Brexiteers have dismissed suggestions that Mrs May could win their support for her deal if she confirms she will be gone before the end of June. David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, told the BBC’S Andrew Marr Show: “It won’t work, that won’t get the vote through. The simple truth is you can change the leader, you can’t change the numbers. We’ve got to focus on the issue here, which is delivering on the Brexit demand of the British people.”