May told to fall on her sword as price for her deal to pass

Insiders reveal some ERG members likely to renege on Withdrawal Agreement stance in Tuesday’s vote

SENIOR aides of Theresa May privately believe she is “finished” and may be forced to set out a timetable for her departure if she is to win the meaningful vote on her Brexit deal.

The Daily Telegraph understands that two senior Downing Street figures believe the Prime Minister should “fall on her sword” and announce she will quit so she is able to “go with dignity”.

They believe she has permanently “lost the trust of Eurosceptics” and will have to make way for a new leader after the Conservative Party conference in October.

The Prime Minister is this weekend attempting to win over Eurosceptics and DUP MPS ahead of a third meaningful vote on her Brexit deal on Tuesday.

Four Cabinet ministers including Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, yesterday held several hours of talks with the DUP in an attempt to gain their support and give reassurances over the Irish backstop.

Government sources said that while extra funding for Northern Ireland was not discussed yesterday, it could be “put on the table” at a later date if they support her deal.

Despite increasing hopes of a breakthrough next week, both ministers and senior figures in Government believe the Prime Minister will have no choice but to go. The Downing Street aides made their concerns clear after the Prime Minister this week lost her second meaningful vote and MPS voted to take a no-deal Brexit off the table.

One of the aides said the “only way” she could win round Eurosceptics was by promising to quit by the end of the year. The other said: “She needs to go with dignity, if she sets a date for her departure she can be remembered as the woman who delivered Brexit.”

No 10 this week insisted that the Prime Minister had not considered resigning in the wake of the defeats. Downing Street sources said that the Prime Minister was “totally focused” on securing her Brexit deal.

AS BREXIT bombshells go, it was sudden and unexpected. By his own admission, David Davis’s revelation that he planned to vote for the Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement left the European Research Group “stunned”.

The former Brexit secretary had been invited to address the influential group of Eurosceptic Tories by Jacob Rees-mogg, its chairman, in a bid to give “all sides of the argument” ahead of Tuesday night’s meaningful vote.

But as the former leadership hopeful told The Daily Telegraph: “I got a respectful but completely silent response. I think it’s fair to say I am not very popular with the ERG right now.”

In the end, Mr Davis was among 39 Tories to switch from rejecting Theresa May’s deal in the first meaningful vote, to supporting it second time around.

With the third meaningful vote scheduled for Tuesday, it remains to be seen how many more Brexiteer backbenchers will conclude, like the man who resigned over Chequers, that a bad deal is better than no Brexit at all.

They say a week is a long time in politics – and in the past three days, Brexiteers have seen no-deal taken off the table, an attempt by Remainer MPS to take control of Brexit stopped by just two votes, Brexit face a delay of up to two years, and a complete breakdown of collective responsibility, with Mrs May’s chief of staff accused of advising ministers to abstain on a three-line whip.

While there is still a determined handful of leavers who will not be willing to back the Withdrawal Agreement under any circumstances, the options are running out for more moderate Eurosceptic Tories who no longer believe in what one described as the “fallacy” that no-deal still remains the default position on March 29.

As Mr Davis put it: “Tuesday will start to feel like the last chance saloon. As I said to the ERG, none of us want to vote for this thing – it’s worse than what I resigned over but the alternative is a cascade of catastrophe as the other side gets more room for manoeuvre to stop Brexit. We won’t survive another Cooper or Boles amendment and then we’re really done for.”

Influential as ever in the decision making are the DUP, who remain in “ongoing and significant discussions with the Government over Brexit”, but ERG members will also be taking their lead from Brexit heavyweights like Mr Rees-mogg and Iain Duncan-smith, who The Telegraph understands are beginning to waver.

Sources say the former Conservative leader “could see some positives” in the legal assurances Mrs May brought back from Strasbourg on Monday – before they were rubbished by the Attorney General and a “star chamber” of Brexiteer lawyers.

“Iain thought they had some merits, but not enough,” said a senior Tory insider.

‘None of us want to vote for this, but the alternative is a catastrophe, because the other side could stop Brexit’

“Owen [Paterson] was more dogmatic, while Rees-mogg appeared more willing to compromise.”

New legal advice from Geoffrey Cox, backed up by Lord Pannick, the highly respected barrister, suggesting Britain could break from the Irish backstop under the terms of the Vienna Convention, may also prove persuasive – even though it has been described as a “non-starter” by star chamber lawyer Martin Howe QC.

As one Tory MP put it: “Howe is so Eurosceptic he is never going to produce any legal advice that ever supports the Withdrawal Agreement.”

Mr Rees-mogg has a soft spot for Pannick after he represented his father, William Rees-mogg, former editor of The Times, in his failed legal challenge to the government’s Maastricht policies in 1993.

Admitting to a “degree of naivety”, the leading Brexiteer told The Telegraph he hadn’t anticipated that “the rules of the House would change and the rules of collective responsibility would change”.

He added: “I have always said that I would choose Mrs May’s deal over not leaving at all.”

Although he described it as “the worst deal in history” and said it would have to completely change for him to support it. Even staunch Brexiteer Peter Bone indicated there might be some wiggle room, saying: “We do not know what could change between now and next week. I have learnt to take things one day at a time.”

Another factor is the leadership hopes of several ERG members including Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab – both of whom face accusations of manoeuvring if they are seen to back the deal in a bid to oust Mrs May.

The former Brexit secretary refused to comment on how he planned to vote on Tuesday, telling The Telegraph: “I’m keeping my powder dry until I’ve weighed up all the options.”

A source close to Mr Johnson added: “He’ll see what next week brings, but there’s been no indication he’s inclined to change his mind.”

Despite having been described as a party within a party, the ERG is a broad church. At the “Brextreme” end, Sir Christopher Chope summed up the mood, telling this newspaper: “I am absolutely determined to vote against it, come what may. I am trying to get people like me to hold firm on this and not fall under the Prime Minister’s spell.

“You don’t need to put an elastic band or something over your nose to vote for this, because if we maintain the courage of our conviction we know the people are on our side in saying ‘let’s get out on March 29’.”

But having resigned from the government last November, saying the withdrawal agreement did not “honour the result of the referendum”, Esther Mcvey gave the opposite view yesterday, when she agreed Leavers might have to “hold their noses and vote” for Mrs May’s deal.

“I don’t know what the number is, but they will have to do that if they want Brexit,” she said.

Brexiteer “convert” Martin Vickers, who switched to backing the deal last week, has crunched the numbers and calculates that “all but 15 of the hardcore” ERG members will end up voting for the Withdrawal Agreement.

The Cleethorpes MP, whose biggest town Grimsby voted 71 per cent Leave, said: “I always thought people like me would end up being backed into a corner of having to decide between the deal or no Brexit and that’s what it has come to.

“No deal is no longer an option – the Government would implode.”