Things are looking up for May
Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel, standing alongside Theresa May, looks to the ceiling as leaders pose for a photo at the Western Balkans summit at Lancaster House in London
Theresa May has been warned she will not get her plans for Brexit through Parliament after pro-eu opposition MPS refused to back them even in a straight vote between her Chequers compromise and a no-deal exit.
Writing in The Scotsman, Nicola Sturgeon said the resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson made it more likely the UK would stay in the EU single market and customs union, but refused to lend the SNP’S support to Mrs May’s proposed Brexit deal.
It came as pro-eu Labour MPS dashed the hopes of Conservative moderates that they could rebel against Jeremy Corbyn to save the Prime Minister’s plan for a limited customs union on industrial and agricultural goods.
Meanwhile, Brexiteers kept piling up the pressure on Mrs May.
MPS Ben Bradley and Maria Caulfield resigned from their posts as deputy chairs of the Conservative Party in protest at a Brexit strategy that Mr Bradley claimed was “handing Jeremy Corbyn the keys to Number 10”.
The Prime Minister also faced embarrassment just days before Donald Trump begins a visit to the UK when the US president said he would like to meet with his “friend” Mr Johnson.
Speaking to journalists before departing for what promises to be a tumultuous summit of the Nato alliance in Brussels, Mr Trump said: “I have Nato, I have the UK – that’s a situation with turmoil,” adding his meeting with the Russian president “may be the easiest of all”. Asked whether he wanted Mrs May to stay in Downing Street, the president said: “I get along with her very well ... that’s certainly up to the people, not up to me.”
Yesterday the First Minister said SNP MPS wouldn’t vote for the Prime Minister’s Brexit plans and called Mrs May to back full membership of the single market and customs union.
And in an article for The Scotsman today, Ms Sturgeon writes: “After the Davis and Johnson resignations, it is highly questionable whether there is a majority for the Chequers plan as it stands.”
She adds: “There is now a chance, I believe, that the events of this week will help pave the way for the least damaging Brexit. That was not the intention of David Davis or Boris Johnson in resigning, but it may yet be their legacy.”
With the dozens of Conservative Brexiteers potentially ready to reject a deal with Brussels based on Mrs May’s plans, moderate figures in the party have appealed for support to the scores of Labour MPS who have previously rebelled against Mr Corbyn to vote in favour of a soft Brexit.
However, those appeals were rejected by one of the leading pro-eu figures on the Labour benches, Wes Streeting, who said the Chequers deal was “dead”. He tweeted the Prime Minister“doesn’thaveamajority for it and there’s no reason why we’d vote for a hard Brexit for services”.
Challenged directly by the Scottish Tory MP Paul Masterton over whether he would “seriously walk through the lobbies with a handful of hardline Eurosceptic Tories, vote down the deal and cause us to crash out without any deal at all”, Mr Streeting replied: “The Labour Party will be constructive,
He thinks he could have been our Trump – so what will Boris do now?
but this isn’t good enough.”
The Prime Minister was given a small boost by the EU’S chief Brexit negotiator, who said he was looking forward to “constructive discussion” based on Mrs May’s plan.
In his first public remarks since the start of the latest crisis, Michel Barnier said: “No deal is the worst solution for everybody. It would be a huge economic problem for the UK and also for the EU. I’m not working for that deal. I’m working for a deal.”
However, Mr Barnier warned: “It will be clear, crystal clear at the end of this negotiation that the best situation, the best relationship with the EU, will be to remain a member.”
Boris Johnson has told friends that he “could have been Britain’s Trump” if only he had stayed in the 2016 Conservative leadership contest, according to reports – a prospect to terrify Theresa May, and many others besides.
As he begins life outside government and contemplates his next move, Mr Johnson has told allies that “he is haunted by the fact his chance may have come and gone when he could have won and been our Trump,” an ally told the Sun.
The most recognisable figure in British politics suffered a swift fall from the grace and favour mansion and ministerial limousine that came with his job as foreign secretary. Mr Johnson was spotted cycling into Parliament yesterday. A
Paris Gourtsoyannis
quiet life on the backbenches is unlikely for a politician whose personal ambition is hard to overestimate: in his final hours as a cabinet minister, he arranged for a photographer to take a picture of him signing his resignation letter.
Downing Street will be consumed by the question of what Mr Johnson, who claimed the Prime Minister’s Brexit strategy risked turning the UK into a “colony”, does next.
There was no shortage of warnings and advice in yesterday’s newspapers. Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne, a former colleague at the Spectator, said Mr Johnson would “position himself as a leader of the Brexiteers and a potential future prime minister”.
But writing in the Daily Telegraph, former Tory leader William Hague had a warning for Mr Johnson and fellow Brexit “romantics”: keep fighting the Prime Minister’s preferred Brexit and the result might not be no-deal, but no Brexit. “The moment and the situation call for ruthless realism,” Mr Johnson’s predecessor at the Foreign Office said. “Dreaming of a world that had turned out differently is not enough”.
Another bid for the leadership of the Conservative Party can’t be ruled out, but seems less likely now than at any point since Theresa May made him a cabinet minister.
The fact that Michael Gove – Mr Johnson’s comrade in the EU referendum battle, his leadership campaign manager, and ultimately the man who betrayed him and stole his dream – has stayed in government.
He isn’t the darling of the Conservative membership that he once was; polling by the influential Conservative Home website suggests that in head-to-head run-offs, Mr Johnson would only beat Jeremy Hunt.
However, it is his colleagues in the Commons who will decide whether Mr Johnson would even get to the final two in a leadership contest.
“His credibility is shot to pieces,” one cabinet source told the Financial Times.
A moderate Tory MP was even pithier when approached by The Scotsman. “He’s an arse.”
It doesn’t say much, but it says enough. Of course, many people said the same about Donald Trump.