Welby warns May: to draw the poison of Brexit you must enlist cross-party support
THE Archbishop of Canterbury today adds to the mounting political pressure on embattled Prime Minister Theresa May by calling for her to appoint a cross-party commission to advise her on the Brexit negotiations.
In an article for today’s Mail on Sunday, Justin Welby puts Brexit on a par with the two world wars – when Britain was run by coalitions – and suggests the same spirit of consensual government should be applied to negotiations with Brussels to ‘draw much of the poison from the debate’.
The Church of England’s most senior cleric contrasts the
‘A commonly agreed aim can be achieved’ ‘The future of UK is not winner takes all’
inspiring ‘ spirit of Grenfell Tower’ with the divisive ‘zerosum, winner takes all’ Brexit arguments in Westminster. ‘We need the politicians to find a way of neutralising the temptation to take minor advantage domestically from these great events,’ he writes.
‘We must develop a forum or commission or some political tool which can hold the ring for the differences to be fought out, so that a commonly agreed negotiating aim is achieved.’
The archbishop’s dramatic intervention comes after last week’s humiliating start to the UK’s Brexit negotiations, with Brussels dismissing our opening offer to protect the rights of 3.2 million EU citizens living in the UK as vague, inadequate and ‘below expectations’.
It will add weight to t he demands of ‘soft’ Brexit supporters – who hope a Brexit Commission could overturn Mrs May’s decision to pull out of the customs union and single market – at the start of a critical week for the Prime Minister. Her Government will fall if she fails to win Thursday’s Commons vote on t he Queen’s Speech, and negotiations were continuing this weekend with Northern Ireland’s DUP over an agreement to secure the support of its ten MPs.
It come as The Mail on Sunday today discloses that Labour’s Chuka Umunna has been holding secret meetings with pro-Remain Tory MPs in an attempt to reach the sort of cross-party consensus on Brexit that Welby is urging.
With Government whips preparing for a string of knife-edge votes over the coming months, sources said that Mr Umunna hopes to strike deals to use amendments to Brexit legislation to force the Government to agree to a soft Brexit.
Mrs May remains under siege on a number of fronts, with the leadership machinations continuing behind the scenes.
Allies of Boris Johnson say they fear that Chancellor Philip Hammond and Brexit Secretary David Davis are planning to outmanoeuvre the Foreign Secretary in any contest by running together on a joint ticket if the Prime Minister resigns or is ousted. This newspaper also reveals today that one leading Tory MP, Sir Desmond Swayne, told Mr Davis at a private Commons gathering of MPs that he ‘couldn’t think of a better leader’ than Mr Davis as a potential successor to Mrs May.
A recent poll by YouGov found a majority, 51 per cent, in favour of Brexit being negotiated by a cross-party team.
In his article, Welby writes: ‘The future of this country is not a zero-sum, winner takes all calculation but must rest on the reconciled common good arrived at through good debate and disagreement.’
And he adds about the commission: ‘It would need to be cross- party and chaired by a senior politician, on Privy Council terms.
‘It could not bind Parliament, but well- structured it could draw much of the poison from the debate.’