‘May cannot carry on after Brexit shambles’ – Carwyn
FIRST Minister Carwyn Jones accused Theresa May of sacrificing the future economic security of the country “on the altar of her party’s needs” after she scrapped plans to hold a crunch vote on her Brexit deal today.
The PM admitted it was on course to be “rejected by a significant margin” if put to a vote. Mrs May will now meet with EU leaders in an attempt to win “reassurances” about fiercely controversial proposals to avoid the creation of a hard border in Ireland.
Mr Jones said: “Shambles is too polite a word for what we have seen today from the Prime Minister... This cannot carry on.”
He said that if Mrs May cannot win the support of Parliament for a deal there should be a general election and if this does not happen it is time for a referendum.
The depth of Welsh opposition to the PM’s deal is demonstrated in a YouGov poll released yesterday which found that 48% of voters wanted MPs to reject it.
Despite Mrs May’s campaign to build public support for the Withdrawal Agreement, only 24% of respondents wanted MPs to back the deal.
European Council President Donald Tusk has insisted it will not be renegotiated and the delay to the vote sent the pound falling to an 18-month low.
FEWER than one in four voters in Wales want their MP to back Theresa May’s Brexit deal in the “meaningful vote”, the latest polling shows.
Theresa May yesterday dramatically called off the vote due to take place later today as Tory rebels threatened to hand her a humiliating defeat.
The YouGov polling shows just 24% of Welsh respondents want their MP to back the Withdrawal Agreement Mrs May has negotiated, while nearly half (48%) want it to be rejected. Nearly one in three people (28%) don’t know.
The poll will make depressing reading for civil servants and aides in Downing St who hoped that Mrs May’s tour of the UK would result in the public putting MPs under pressure to back the deal.
But the findings will also make disappointing reading for those pushing for a second referendum with an option to stay in the EU. The research found voters are divided on what should happen next.
A mere 7% want another referendum, and although the most popular outcome was that Brexit would not take place, this was the choice of fewer than one in three (31%) people.
However, if the choice is between a referendum and a no-deal exit, 56% would back a public vote.
When asked how they would vote in another referendum, there was a decisive majority in favour of remaining – 54% versus 46% when “don’t knows” and non-voters were excluded. This compares with the result of the 2016 referendum in Wales, when 52.5% voted to leave and 47.5% to remain.
A heavy defeat would renew questions about Mrs May’s future as Prime Minister. The polling shows that Mrs May is unlikely to find much clamour in Wales for her to stay in the top job, with 46% saying she should quit.
However, there is a strong belief that the country should not exit the EU without a deal.
The likes of Airbus have warned in stark terms of the serious consequences that could result from a no deal exit.
Six out of 10 people argues a deal is needed.
Speaking before yesterday’s shock postponement of the vote, Prof Roger Awan-Scully, head of Politics and International Relations at Cardiff University, said: “Overall, a wealth of evidence that suggests that Theresa May has signally failed to unite the public behind the draft Withdrawal Agreement.
“Far more people are opposed than supportive.
“If MPs do indeed vote down the deal, they are very unlikely to face any public backlash.”
He said her strategy of going out to the nations of the UK to drum up support for the deal had worked “about as well as her general election,” adding: “Whatever other many strengths she may have, an ability to persuade the public doesn’t seem to be one of them.”
The full figures for how people would vote in a second referendum put Remain on 44% (-1), Leave on 38% (-3), Would Not Vote on 9% (+3) and Don’t Know/Refused on 10% (+2).
Prof Awan-Scully said the six-point margin in favour of Remain was “the largest remain lead in any Welsh poll since the actual referendum”.
As for Mrs May’s future, the professor said: “I’ve been following politics since the 1979 election. This is the most extraordinary time in UK politics that I can recall.”
Commenting on the prospect of Mrs May losing the “meaningful vote”, he added: “If a Prime Minister and a Government are so heavily rejected by the House of Commons, if they cannot get their most important single policy through Parliament then what, in a sense, is the point of that Prime Minister and Government being in office?
“You couldn’t just carry on. I think we might well see a no confidence vote, a leadership challenge, maybe both.
“There’s talk about a general election, which I think is possible, though in a general election who is going to lead the Conservative party? And what would they say on Brexit?...
“I think the possibly the one certainty would be that if we do get a general election the Conservatives are not likely to go quite so big as they did last time on ‘strong and stable leadership’.”
■ YouGov polled 1,024 Welsh adults on December 4-7.
PRIME Minister Theresa May has dramatically called off a House of Commons vote on her Brexit plan, admitting that she would have lost by a “significant margin”.
Mrs May will now travel to Europe over the coming days in the hope of securing new reassurances from fellow EU leaders to allay MPs’ concerns about proposed backstop arrangements for the Irish border.
In a statement to MPs, Mrs May also said the Government was stepping up preparations for a possible no-deal Brexit, despite saying that this would cause “significant economic damage to parts of our country”.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the Government was “in disarray” and told Mrs May she should step aside if she was unable to deliver the “fundamental changes” needed to her plans.
More than 50 Labour MPs and peers wrote to Mr Corbyn urging him to call a vote of no confidence in Mrs May as Prime Minister, while Nicola Sturgeon and Sir Vince Cable assured him that the SNP and Liberal Democrats will back him if he does.
But Labour made clear it will hold back on a confidence motion until after Mrs May returns to the Commons with whatever assurances she secures from EU leaders.
“We will put down a motion of no confidence when we judge it most likely to be successful,” said a Labour spokesman.
If Mrs May brings her plan back to the Commons without significant changes, “she will have decisively and unquestionably lost the confidence of Parliament on the most important issue facing the country, and Parliament will be more likely to bring about the general election our country needs to end this damaging deadlock.”
Sterling tumbled to an 20-month low following Mrs May’s announcement, hitting its lowest level since April 2017.
Versus the US dollar, the pound was trading at 1.25 in evening trade, a fall of 1.1%. Against the euro, sterling shed 1% to hit 1.10.
European Council president Donald Tusk announced that Brexit has been added to the agenda of a twoday EU summit in Brussels taking place on Thursday and Friday.
Mr Tusk said: “We will not renegotiate the deal, including the backstop, but we are ready to discuss how to facilitate UK ratification. As time is running out, we will also discuss our preparedness for a no-deal scenario.”
And a spokeswoman for European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker poured cold water on any prospect of a renegotiation of the Withdrawal Agreement.
Speaking ahead of Mrs May’s statement, the spokeswoman said: “This deal is the best and only deal possible. We will not renegotiate.”
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar ruled out reopening talks around the backstop, saying it was not possible to reopen any aspect of the Withdrawal Agreement without reopening all of it.
Addressing the Commons, the Prime Minister accepted that there was was “widespread and deep concern” among MPs over the backstop arrangement, designed to keep the Irish border open if the EU and UK fail to strike a wider trade deal.
But she insisted that there was “no deal available that does not include the backstop”.
And she said that none of the alternative outcomes – a second referendum, the so-called Norway-plus membership of the single market and customs union or no-deal Brexit – could command a majority in the House.
Mrs May said she still believed there was “a majority to be won” in favour of the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on future EU/UK relations agreed with Brussels after more than 18 months of negotiations.
And she said: “It is clear that this House faces a much more fundamental question. Does this House want to deliver Brexit? And if it does, does it want to do so through reaching an agreement with the EU?
“If the answer is yes, and I believe that is the answer of the majority of this House, then we all have to ask ourselves whether we are prepared to make a compromise.
“Because there will be no enduring and successful Brexit without some compromise on both sides of the debate.”
The Government was also looking at “new ways of empowering the House of Commons” to ensure that any provision for a backstop has “democratic legitimacy and to enable the House to place its own obligations on the Government to ensure that the backstop cannot be in place indefinitely”, said Mrs May.
The remaining two days of a planned five-day debate on Mrs May’s proposals will be deferred, along with votes on the deal, to a date yet to be fixed. This was being done by a parliamentary procedure which does not require approval from MPs, despite Speaker John Bercow saying it would be “discourteous” to do so.
Downing Street was unable to give any indication of when the vote will now be held, saying that this would depend on how quickly Mrs May is able to secure the assurances which will satisfy MPs.
A spokesman said there was no plan to extend the two-year Article 50 process under which the UK will leave the EU on March 29 2019, whether or not there is a withdrawal deal.
Wales’ First Minister Carwyn Jones said: “Shambles is too polite a word for what we have seen today from the Prime Minister.
“The future economic security of this country is being sacrificed on the altar of her party’s needs. This cannot carry on.
“If the Prime Minister cannot bring forward a deal that commands the support of Parliament, there needs to be a general election.
“If there isn’t a general election, there needs to be a people’s vote on the terms on which the UK leaves or if the country wishes to remain.”
Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts said: “The Prime Minister is running scared. She can only delay the inevitable loss. She made promises that she cannot deliver and now she is coming up against reality. The only single person who can stop a no-deal Brexit is the Prime Minister. By delaying this vote she is personally making a nodeal Brexit more likely.
“The Prime Minister wants to deny the public a say in a People’s Vote and now she is trying to deny MPs a
vote too. She is denying democracy on all fronts.
“People deserve better than the chaos in Westminster. Now we know the truth about Brexit, people must be given the right to decide whether the reality of leaving the European Union is what they want.”
A Government source said that today’s scheduled Cabinet meeting was being cancelled because of Mrs May’s travel plans. There was no immediate confirmation of which European leaders she hopes to speak with.
Mrs May spoke with European Council president Donald Tusk, European Commission president JeanClaude Juncker, Dutch PM Mark Rutte, Irish Taioseach Leo Varadkar and German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the weekend.
She was briefed on the likely scale of her defeat by chief whip Julian Smith oyesterday morning before deciding to “consult” Cabinet colleagues in a conference call on her decision to defer the vote.
A Downing Street source said that the PM received “strong support” from Cabinet ministers for the postponement, with none opposing the decision.
To cries of “resign” directed at the Prime Minister from the Labour backbenches, Mr Corbyn told the Commons that “fundamental flaws” in Mrs May’s proposals meant she could not simply bring it back next week or in January and hope to win MPs’ approval.
“The Government is in disarray, uncertainty is building for business, people are in despair at the state of these failed negotiations and concerned about what it means for their jobs and communities – and the fault of that lies solely at the door of this shambolic Government,” said the Labour leader.