Pro-EU Tories demand Brexit detail
Europe’s mainstream leaders are struggling to keep control as populist sentiment rises at its edges
THERESA MAY is facing a rebellion from Tory MPs over her refusal to publish a Brexit plan before a vote on starting talks, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
Pro-European Tories have warned that if the Government wants MPs to green-light the start of negotiations they need to publish a White Paper setting out their Brexit strategy.
Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, told this newspaper it was of the “utmost importance” that a plan is laid within the next fortnight.
Several other Tories are understood to support his position, with one saying a written plan is needed “as soon as possible” so MPs can interrogate the Government over its Brexit priorities.
The row poses the greatest threat of defeat to the Government as its Bill to start Brexit talks is debated in the House of Commons this week. The legislation – called the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 – would give the prime minister the power to trigger Article 50, formally notifying the EU of the UK’s intention to leave. The legislation will be debated beyond midnight on Tuesday in a special sitting designed to ensure every MP who wants to can have their say. Another day’s debate and an initial vote is due on Wednesday, with a binding vote coming the following week.
Politicians on all sides predict the legislation will pass with a sizable majority because both the Tories and Labour have ordered MPs to approve it.
More than 70 amendments to the Bill are being tabled by political opponents.
The Sunday Telegraph has established that pro-EU Tory MPs whose support is needed for any of the amendments to pass will reject almost all of them.
Sources said it was “very improbable” that Tory MPs would vote for any amendments currently proposed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats – meaning they are unlikely to pass.
However, Tory MPs are willing to go public with a demand that the Government
‘We want to see the White Paper as early as possible in the Article 50 Bill debates so we can comment’
publishes a written Brexit plan as soon as possible.
Mr Grieve said: “I remain of the view that it is of the utmost importance that Parliament should have a White Paper, certainly before it debates committee stage of the Article 50 Bill. I believe that such a White Paper will be very helpful to the Government in getting parliamentary support.” A second Tory MP said: “Clearly we want to see the White Paper as early as possible in the Article 50 Bill debates so we can comment on behalf of our constituents on the Government’s objectives. We’re pretty sure ministers get that link.”
The Prime Minister agreed to publish a White Paper last week, responding to pressure from her backbenchers who had told whips of their disquiet in a series of private meetings.
However, Downing Street has repeatedly refused to say when it will appear, leading MPs to fear it may come after Brexit talks have been triggered – or “beyond the point of no return”.
Ministers are privately working on the Brexit White Paper – believed to be around 50 pages long. Some claim that forcing the Prime Minister to show her hand before talks start would give the other EU nations a tactical advantage.
Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn, the La- bour leader, is facing his own rebellion after ordering Labour MPs to approve the Bill that would trigger Article 50 despite the party’s previous support for EU membership.
He suffered a spate of front bench rebellions last week over the stance and dozens of Labour MPs are expected to defy him and vote against the Bill
Tomorrow Mrs May will demand that Nicola Sturgeon drops her threat of a second independence referendum for Scotland. Meeting face-to-face for the first time this year, the Prime Minister is expected to tell Ms Sturgeon that her “constant” threat of a second independence vote is a “distraction”.
The pair will meet in Cardiff alongside other cabinet ministers and devolved administration leaders at the Joint Ministerial Committee to discuss Brexit talks.
FOUR months ago the 27 member states of the European Union who will be left standing after Brexit came together in Bratislava for a self-proclaimed “unity” summit that ended – somewhat predictably – in a spectacular show of disunity.
After several hours chugging down the Danube in a riverboat, the EU leaders emerged in an open squabble: Matteo Renzi, the then prime minister of Italy, refused to share a stage with his French and German counterparts in a row over austerity, while Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s leader, immediately denounced the EU’s policy on refugees as “self-destructive and naïve”.
On Friday Europe will try again, gathering for another informal summit, this time in the baroque courtyards of the Grandmaster’s Palace in Valletta, Malta, but already it seems the end result may well be much the same.
Preparing the ground this week, François Hollande and Angela Merkel met and repeated their mantra that Europe needs “a clear, common commitment to the European Union, to what we have accomplished, and to the values of our liberal, democratic democracies”. In short, “more Europe”, and “better Europe”.
But you did not need to look far to find the voices of dissent – not just across the Atlantic where Donald Trump is delighting in disrupting the old order of things both at home and abroad – but within Europe itself, where internal divisions run deeper than at any time since 1945.
Mr Orbán, the defiantly illiberal prime minister of Hungary, prefigured the disputes that will unfold behind the honeyed walls of Malta’s capital city, penning a 7,500-word essay this week entitled “Hungary and the Crisis of Europe” that laid bare those divisions.
Everyone can see that Europe is assailed from without by the threats of migration, terrorism and a revanchist leader in Russia, but it is the battle of ideas inside Europe about how to deal with these threats that really risks tearing Europe’s political union apart. Europe, Mr Orbán wrote, was “wealthy but weak” and had failed to grasp the true reality of the populist counter-revolution that now threatens a wholescale rejection of the liberal values that Mr Hollande, Mrs Merkel, and an increasingly politicised European Commission, seek to defend.
Immigration, said Mr Orbán bluntly, was a “bad thing” that threatened to destroy Europe’s security, cultural identity and trust in political institutions. It was not, as the schemes from Brussels implicitly suppose, an essentially “good thing” that simply required better management, including more burden sharing and imposed quotas for member states.
That is why, fundamentally, EU efforts to sugar the pill with electronic visa schemes and more returns to places such as Libya will not assuage Mr Orbán – and other populists like Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Beppe Grillo – who believe EU political elites have simply lost touch with reality.
As Mr Orbán witheringly put it, for the last 70 years, the centre-Right and centre-Left have basically “taken turns to implement the same policies” that – in the face of economic stagnation, terror and migration – transparently no longer deliver.
The results could be seen this week in Austria, for example, where the grand coalition of the Left-wing Social Democrat party and the centre-Right Austrian People’s Party is close to breaking point, opening the way for the far-Right, anti-immigrant Freedom Party to capitalise on its lead at the polls at a snap general election, perhaps as early as this May.
The phenomenon is not unique to Austria. All across the continent the centre is struggling to hold on – establishment parties that have perennially ruled the roost over the last 70 years can no longer be assured of their position.
In the Netherlands the anti-immigrant Mr Wilders is on track to form the largest party after elections this March; in Italy, where elections this summer became more likely after a court ruling last week, the Five Star Movement now rivals Mr Renzi’s Democratic Party to be the largest body; and in France, as the Left implodes in the wake of Mr Hollande’s ineffectual presidency, the traditional Right is now beset by squabble and scandal.
It is against this backdrop that the arrival of Mr Trump sends shivers down the European elite.
What to make of a US president whose preferred pick for EU ambassador (reportedly referred to him by Nigel Farage) talks openly about “shorting the Euro” and draws parallels between the fall of the Soviet Union and what he predicts will be the coming collapse of the EU?
At the same time, Mr Trump’s top lieutenant, Steve Bannon, has devoted his entire career to boosting the fortunes of men like Mr Trump, and – in a sign of things to come – the Breitbart news organisation he founded is now setting up shop in France, Italy and Germany.
So the announcements at the Valletta Summit this week will – in the eyes of leaders like Mr Orbán – be another example of the fiddling of the EU elites while the continent burns.
Viewed this way, says Mr Orbán, the British public’s rejection of more Europe is a “harbinger of eventual disintegration” that – while it might indeed inflict a “painful rebirth” on the United Kingdom – speaks to the existential threats that Europe now faces.
“The British will find themselves sooner than we think,” he concludes. “We should worry rather about ourselves.”
‘The British will find themselves sooner than we think. We should worry rather about ourselves’