May pushed towards a second referendum

Prime Minister’s team discuss new Brexit vote with Labour if cross-party deal fails

THERESA MAY’S ministers have discussed the possibility of giving MPS a vote on a second referendum during talks to try to agree a Brexit deal with Jeremy Corbyn, it emerged last night.

A team of four ministers led by David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister, held four and a half hours of talks with their Labour counterparts yesterday during which the option of offering a second referendum was discussed.

Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, is believed to have said that a public vote had to be one of the options put to MPS in a series of indicative votes which will take place next week if a cross-party deal cannot be agreed.

In a letter to Labour MPS, Mr Corbyn said a “confirmatory” referendum, which would offer voters a choice between a Brexit deal or remaining in the EU, had been discussed by the teams.

Last night, Government sources played down the idea that such a plan had been agreed, as Downing Street rebuked Philip Hammond for suggesting that MPS should have another chance to vote on a second referendum.

The issue has proved deeply divisive in both parties. After the Chancellor argued in favour of a vote on a “confirmatory” referendum, Downing Street pointed out that the notion had already been voted down twice by MPS.

Nigel Evans, executive secretary of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPS, said: “Over the past two years Theresa May has taunted Jeremy Corbyn from the despatch box over the idea of a second referendum. If that became all of a sud- den possible under these negotiations, the little bit of credibility she has left would be completely shattered.” Mrs May faces a mass walkout of up to 10 ministers if she pivots to a customs union after the idea was discussed at a meeting of senior Eurosceptics.

Meanwhile, 25 Labour MPS, including several front-benchers, wrote to Mr Corbyn warning him not to seek a second referendum because it would “simply divide the country further”.

Tory peers yesterday warned MPS that they risked a voters’ revolt if they refused to accept the result of the EU referendum. As the Lords debated a Bill passed by the Commons on Wednesday that would force Mrs May to seek a Brexit extension, Lord Lawson, the former chancellor, said “constitutional vandalism” was causing a rift between Parliament and the people.

Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, warned that Britain would be stuck in the EU for another year if Mrs May and Mr Corbyn could not agree a deal. Mr Cox said that Mrs May would have “little choice” but to accept whatever the EU offered her next week.

Mrs May was understood to be drafting a letter to Mr Corbyn last night summing up the result of two days of talks between the two parties, which will continue today, as well as suggesting the alternatives MPS should vote on if there is no cross-party deal.

Labour sources said they expected a referendum to be one of the choices. Government sources insisted Mrs May remained opposed to a second referendum. But the threat of one in the indic- ative votes could be a useful device for Mrs May to get her original deal passed as the “least worst” option for Brexiteers.

‘Eurocrats had her measure as a tailor has your inside leg. All that “no deal is better than a bad deal” stuff was an inept lie’

‘Now Mrs May is hopping into bed with anglophobe, terrorist supporting, Russialoving commie Corbyn’

When Mohandas Gandhi won independence for India in 1947 he was called the Mahatma, which means “Great Soul”. In 1980, Lech Walesa, an electrician at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk, put down his toolbox and led fellow workers in overthrowing their Soviet rulers.

Walesa, now 75, is revered in Poland and throughout former Iron Curtain countries which, after his brave stand, were released from communist tyranny.

Those two heroes were loved – yes, genuinely adored – for risking their personal safety in the pursuit of liberty.

Gandhi would pay for it with his life a year later, when he was assassinated.

And yet his legend lives on, for good reason.

Freedom is the most human of yearnings. We hate to be chained. We want to control our destinies and feel the wind run through our hair.

It is an instinct understood by slaves

and oppressed peoples from history’s first light. That acclaim earned by Gandhi and Walesa will never belong to Theresa May. Lips will curl at her very name for decades to come.

It will be spat to the floor in balls of green-gob spittle, hissed, sworn at with the sort of language we must not print in a newspaper. She will be called a traitor, with plenty of adjectives attached. And she will deserve it.

This is a terrible thing to say about any person, let alone a churchgoing diabetic who has been our Prime Minister for two years. I take no pleasure in levelling the charge of treachery at a Tory leader who secured 42 per cent of the vote in the 2017 general election.

We all want our Prime Ministers to be honourable and to improve the lot of our land. But after her surrender this week to Brussels and to Jeremy Corbyn, May’s name will rank alongside those of the worst eels in Western history.

In the past, when trying to describe national moral collapse, we have perhaps spoken of Quisling, Nazi Germany’s Norwegian political puppet; or Neville Chamberlain, who also appeased Hitler; or Jimmy Carter, whose inertia and incompetence on Iran was a low-point for the US presidency. Theresa May’s leadership of our country will be placed alongside those shameful episodes. She has wriggled. She has lied. She has concealed and dithered and caved. She is a freaking disaster.

The tragedy is that it need not have been like this.

Even on Tuesday afternoon, while she was having that seven-hour meeting with her Cabinet, she could have saved herself and our country.

“No deal is better than a bad deal,” May used to say about Brexit. It was meant to make the European Commission offer us decent divorce terms. But Brussels did not believe her because they sensed, from her clunkiness and from sly Philip Hammond’s refusal to fund no-deal preparations, that she did not mean it. She was a useless bluffer.

On Tuesday night, when May effectively ruled out a no-deal Brexit, we saw that the Eurocrats had her measure as accurately as a tailor has your inside leg. All that “no deal is better than a bad deal” stuff had merely been an inept lie.

And yet no deal could have been brilliant. It could have secured us our independence from a European Union that now is sucking us back into its prison. No deal would have served our children’s interests, because we would not have had to pay £39billion to Europe and because we would have been able to forge our own way in the world.

The ensuing instability might only have lasted a few weeks, if that.

Mrs May would not consider it. She collapsed like overwatered jelly, listening to dodgy Whitehall chief Sir Mark Sedwill and his (leaked) alarmist tales about what no deal might do to our economy.

Now Mrs May is hopping into bed – it’s a horrible image, sorry – with anglophobe, terrorist-supporting, Russia-loving commie Corbyn.

She has asked the Labour leader to give her some ideas about how she can get her Withdrawal Agreement through the Commons.

The deal is already a feeble compromise – but Corbyn’s pals will make it even more pathetic. Yes, lean-fingered Corbyn will have his wicked way with May much as he once did with Diane Abbott.

Any Brexit will now likely be so weak that we will not even have control of our own trade policy. We will have to do what we are told and send our money to Brussels. We will be shackled captives.

Remember the TV slave drama Roots? Well, Theresa May has made a right Kunta Kinte of herself – and, damn it, the rest of us.

Few in public life have come out of this disgusting saga with credit.

The broadcast media, and, sadly, some newspapers, have been blinkered cheerleaders for our European gangmasters. Those who spoke up for our kingdom’s independence were attacked as “extremists”.

Is it really “extreme” to want to have a say over how you are taxed and governed? Senior figures in the law, the arts, charities and big business have spouted EU propaganda. Worst of all has been our Parliament, where Remainer MPS and peers and a blatantly biased Speaker have actively sought to block the referendum verdict of 17.4million voters – a verdict they had repeatedly promised to respect.

As for the most ardent Brexiteers at Westminster, they became so doped up on publicity, so daftly entrenched in their enmity to common sense, that they failed to grab our best chance of escaping the EU. What morons. Hoofed the ball into their own net.

Same with the Democratic Unionists, whose intransigence now looks like making sure that our next Prime Minister is a man with a soft spot for the IRA.

The stuff of nightmares? If only it were merely a dream.