PM: There’s no point getting rid of me
THERESA May yesterday took a swipe at Tory rivals threatening to unseat her as party leader as she warned the next seven days would be “critical” to achieving a successful Brexit.
The Prime Minister warned that a change of leadership would not make it easier to get a deal past parliament or the EU, after furious Brexiteer backbenchers started moves to remove her.
She told Sky’s Ridge On Sunday that as far as she knew the 48-letter threshold for letters of no confidence needed to start a leadership battle had yet to be reached.
In a message to those plotting her downfall, including members of the European Research Group of Eurosceptic MPs, she said she had not considered quitting.
She added: “A change of leadership at
this point isn’t going to make the negotiations any easier and it isn’t going to change the parliamentary arithmetic. What it will do is bring in a degree of uncertainty. That is uncertainty for people and their jobs.
“What it will do is mean that it is a risk that we delay the negotiations and that is a risk that Brexit gets delayed or frustrated.”
Mrs May’s interview came after former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, whose resignation last week was a key point in one of her most brutal weeks as Prime Minister, suggested she had failed to stand up to a bullying European Union.
There were also continuing reports of a plan by senior Cabinet ministers who remain in Government to try to alter the withdrawal agreement at the 11th hour.
Asked about this, Mrs May said that “there is indeed more negotiation taking place and nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”.
Mr Raab told the BBC’s Marr show that he supported the Prime Minister – but not her deal, adding: “I want her to get this right.”
But he also confirmed he had been speaking “intensively” with Andrea Leadsom and other ministers looking to change her deal.
He said: “I only resigned on Thursday morning so I can’t say I have had extensive conversations. But I am willing to talk and be as constructive as I can.”
He warned MPs against submitting no confidence letters to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, saying: “It’s a total distraction from what we need to do, we need to get Brexit over the line, we need to support our Prime Minister.
“I have got huge respect for her, I wrote that in my resignation letter, it is not flim-flam.
“I have worked very closely with her on Brexit and I think there is still the opportunity to get this right, support the Prime Minister – but she must also listen and change course on Brexit.”
He told Marr that the Brexit deal achieved was “fatally flawed” but could be remedied by just “two or three points” being changed.
He said that the customs backstop plan meant that the UK would remain tied to the EU with no say and no way of independently freeing itself.
Mr Raab said: “The argument is made ‘let’s get this over the line and play for the second half, the future relationship negotiations’.
“But... it would tilt the advantage in favour of the EU and prejudice, frankly taint, the second phase of negotiation.
“So I think it is a fatal flaw and the shame of it is I have supported this PM all the way through her premiership – I still do now.
“We were close to a deal and actually if these two or three points were changed I still think a deal could be done but it is very late in the day now and we need to change course.”
Mr Raab accused the EU of “blackmail” and said the Government’s political will was lacking in negotiations.
He said: “I do think we are being bullied, I do think we are being subjected to what is pretty close to blackmail frankly.
“I do think there is a point at which, we probably should have done it before, where we just say ‘I’m sorry this is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we cannot accept those dictated terms’.”
Asked if he believed the deal was worth the £39bn “divorce bill”, Mr Raab said “no”.
The former Brexit secretary also said that he still supported the Prime Minister and would not support a leadership challenge against her.
He said: “I will support this Prime Minister and I want her to get this right.”
Asked if she had considered step-
ping down, Mrs May said: “No I haven’t.
“Of course it has been a tough week, actually these negotiations have been tough right from the start, but they were always going to get even more difficult right toward the end when we are coming to that conclusion.”
She added that the next seven days “are going to be critical”, and said she would be travelling back to Brussels to talk with key figures including Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president ahead of an emergency European Council summit on November 25.
Mrs May earlier defended her Brexit deal, telling Sky News that the EU originally wanted to offer the UK an “off-the-shelf deal”.
She said: “We fought that, we stood our ground, we said no, we’re the UK, actually we can have a better more ambitious relationship with you.
“It took time but they have come round to that, they said yes, we’ll agree a more ambitious relationship with the UK than we at first thought we could give you.”
When pressed over what the Government would do in the event a vote on the Brexit deal was lost in the Commons, Mrs May said: “There’s a process that Parliament will go through, were it the case that the deal was lost then the Government would come back with their proposals for what the next step was.”
Responding to Mrs May’s interview, a source in the ERG said: “We have negotiated in good faith with the iceberg and cannot break our commitments to it.”