May facing Cabinet infighting over Brexit
The hard choices of Brexit have tipped Theresa May’s Conservative Party into open warfare. It’s not clear the prime minister will survive the crossfire.
May has held onto her job by avoiding too much clarity on what Britain’s divorce from the European Union might look like, even as the process has been going on for nearly a year. She still hasn’t stamped her vision of Brexit on her divided Cabinet, and that’s led to “huge uncertainty for business,” said Hilary Benn, chairman of Parliament’s Leaving the European Union Committee.
As May is forced to reveal her hand, both extremes of her party’s Brexit spectrum are emboldened, with those seeking the most radical break from Brussels making threats, demanding firings, and questioning the integrity of the country’s revered civil service. They’ve even hatched a plot to oust her, according to the Sunday Times.
“The prime minister is clearly finding it impossible to reconcile the two factions within her Cabinet,” Benn said in a BBC radio interview on Monday. “All of this argument about the forecasts, attacks on civil servants, is a sign of the dysfunction there is at the heart of the government.”
While the parliamentary arithmetic probably supports a divorce that maintains more ties to the European Union, May knows she has to listen to the proBrexit hardliners. Her eagerness to keep them onside was underlined late Sunday when her office said the U.K. would leave the bloc’s customs union after the divorce, acceding to a key demand of the Brexit hardliners.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Conservative so keen on Brexit that he advocates leaving without even a transition period, has emerged as a potential leadership rival as critics of May are increasingly vocal.
At the heart of the conflict is how close a relationship Britain should seek with the EU after Brexit. Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond wants a “modest” separation, a view that has Brexit backers calling for his head.
The latest fight is whether the U.K. should remain in some kind of customs union with the EU after it leaves. Business says yes, as do some ministers and outspoken Conservative lawmakers. It’s an option that would help solve the intractable problem of what happens to the Irish border after Brexit. May has promised Ireland and the EU there will no hard border, and breaking that promise isn’t an option if she wants an orderly exit.