May pledges to fight on as Leavers quit
Frantic reshuffle as Brexiteers Johnson and Davis walk out over PM’s blueprint
THERESA MAY’S leadership was thrown into chaos yesterday following the sensational resignations of Boris Johnson and David Davis, her Cabinet’s two most senior Brexiteers.
A senior Downing Street source was forced to deny the Government was in “meltdown” following the resignations of the Cabinet “big beasts” and revealed the Prime Minister planned to fight any vote of no confidence if her leadership is challenged by Brexiteer Tory MPs.
On a day of high drama in Westminster, Vote Leave figurehead Mr Johnson quit as Foreign Secretary about 15 hours after Mr Davis resigned as Brexit Secretary, taking junior Minister Steve Baker with him.
Mrs May wasted no time in appointing Jeremy Hunt as Foreign Secretary, Mr Hunt having recently secured a £20bn-a-year funding increase for the NHS as Health Secretary.
He was replaced in that role by Culture Secretary Matt Hancock, who will in turn be succeeded by Attorney General Jeremy Wright.
Mr Johnson, who quit amid farcical scenes with a German Minister left waiting at a summit on the Western Balkans that he was supposed to host, said the strategy Mrs May agreed with her Cabinet at a Chequers away day on Friday would leave the country “heading for a semi-Brexit” and “the status of a colony”.
“The dream is dying”, he added. Mr Davis, who quit just before midnight yesterday, also savaged the plan for a “common rulebook” between the EU and UK for goods, saying it would give Parliament “illusory rather than real” control of the country’s laws. But Mrs May, who faced MPs for more than two hours in the House of Commons, insisted “this is not a betrayal” of Brexiteers. And a Number 10 source insisted there was no plan to revisit the deal.
The resignations sparked intense speculation that Mrs May could be subject to a leadership challenge. But The Yorkshire Post understands that yesterday evening Sir Graham Brady, the head of the backbench Tory 1922 Committee, had not yet received the 48 letters required to trigger a vote of no confidence in the PM.
Conservative MP for Morley and Outwood Andrea Jenkyns said she believed that Mrs May’s time as Prime Minister was “over”, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she wanted a premier who would “provide true leadership and a positive postBrexit vision for our country”.
Senior backbencher Bernard Jenkin said there had been a “massive haemorrhage of trust” in Mrs May. Asked if Brexiteers needed to put the PM’s future to a vote of the Conservative Party, he replied “it may well come to that”.
However, prominent Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chairman of the European Research Group of Eurosceptic backbenchers, said he had not submitted a letter of no confidence and expected Mrs May to remain at least until the official date of Brexit in March 2019.
Staunch Brexiteer Dominic Raab was named as Mr Davis’s replacement as Secretary of State for Leaving the EU. Chris Green, parliamentary private secretary to the Department for Transport, also announced his resignation.
European Council president Donald Tusk suggested the resignations could spell the end for Brexit, while Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said there needs to be a Government capable of “governing and negotiating for Britain”, adding: “For the good of this country and its people, the Government needs to get its act together and do it quickly and if it can’t, make way for those who can.”
For the good of this country the Government needs to get its act together. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
DAVID DAVIS has warned the UK is giving “too much away, too easily” in the exit talks, but backed Theresa May to remain Prime Minister after his dramatic resignation rocked her premiership.
The outgoing Brexit Secretary said the Government had gone further than it should have in the negotiations, in a “dangerous strategy”. The Haltemprice and Howden MP’s late-night resignation on Sunday plunged Mrs May into a fresh leadership crisis and he was swiftly followed out of the Department for Exiting the EU by ally Steve Baker.
Staunch Eurosceptic Dominic Raab was appointed Mr Davis’s successor as Brexit Secretary, in a swift move which scotched speculation that Mrs May might take direct charge of negotiations herself. Appearing on BBC Radio 4’s
Today programme yesterday, just hours after his midnight resignation, Mr Davis said a leadership challenge would be the “wrong thing to do” and insisted he believed Mrs May was a “good prime minister”. Asked if she could survive, he replied: “Oh yes, of course.”
Downing Street insiders insisted Mr Davis had resigned over a difference of opinion rather than as part of a push against Mrs May, and said he had “done the honourable thing”.
Mr Davis said he told the PM at Chequers that he was going to be the “odd man out in this” as the latest stage of the Brexit strategy was agreed.
He told Today: “It seems to me we are giving too much away too easily and that’s a dangerous strategy at this time.
“Hopefully we will resist very strongly any attempt to get any further concessions from us on this, because I think this goes further than we should have gone already.”
Describing the plans as having a “number of weaknesses”, he explained that it would “not have been plausible” for him to be “front and centre in delivering” it. In his resignation letter, Mr Davis said the policy “hands control of large swathes of our economy to the EU and is certainly not returning control of our laws in any real sense”.
The responsibility for leading the negotiations should now go to an “enthusiastic believer in your approach, and not merely a reluctant conscript”, he said.
In her reply, Mrs May told him: “I do not agree with your characterisation of the policy we agreed on at Cabinet on Friday.”
There had been confusion surrounding the position of Brexit Minister Suella Braverman who had reportedly also quit, but a spokesman for the department confirmed she remains in post.
Later, Conservative infighting broke out in the Commons as Mrs May was forced to deny the Chequers agreement was a “betrayal” over Brexit.
Peter Bone faced shouts of “shame” and “nonsense” from Tory colleagues as he outlined how activists in his Wellingborough constituency refused to campaign at the weekend as they felt “betrayed” over what emerged from the Cabinet summit.
Mrs May, who was giving a statement just minutes after the resignation of Boris Johnson, said she was “very sorry” the activists did not feel able to campaign, before adding: “This is not a betrayal.”
She added: “We will end free movement, we will end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, we will stop sending vast sums of money to the European Union every year, we will come out of the Common Agricultural Policy, we will come out of the Common Fisheries Policy.
“I believe that is what people voted for when they voted to leave and we will deliver in faith to the British people.”
Conservative former Minister Sir Edward Leigh earlier noted the EU has said it will not tolerate cherry-picking, adding: “What I fear is we picked the wrong cherry, for this reason – we, by accepting a common rulebook in goods, are locking ourselves into a sclerotic structure where the EU has an overwhelming trading surplus.
“Will this not severely constrain our ability to make our business more competitive and to undertake free-trade deals, so that Brexit will no longer mean Brexit – it will mean the commission, where we will have no vote, regulating our business forever?”
Mrs May said this was “not the position for the future”, adding Parliament will be able to take decisions on rules but that businesses wanting to export to the EU will continue to operate to its rulebook on industrial goods.
I do not agree with your characterisation of the policy we agreed. Theresa May in her response to David Davis.