May to publish Brexit legal advice as Tories urge change of course
The government will release legal advice received over Brexit on Wednesday morning following Tuesday’s extraordinary three parliamentary defeats in a single day.
Andrea Leadsom said the documents would be handed over at 11.30am after MPs passed a historic motion finding the government in contempt of parliament for failing to previously publish.
Meanwhile, a string of Conservative colleagues urged the prime minister to change her plans for Brexit, which are due to be voted upon on Tuesday. She is facing almost certain defeat when MPs vote on the withdrawal agreement on 11 December.
In a defiant interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Leadsom, the leader of the House, said any MP who had ambitions of being in government at some point in the future would “live to regret” the contempt vote that forced the government to publish its full Brexit legal advice.
She said Wednesday night’s defeats made leaving the EU without a deal more likely and urged colleagues to return to the deal when they voted on it next Tuesday.
She said: “We will comply with [the vote] but not without some regret. This is a very important breach that has taken place here.
“Law officers themselves will be very reluctant to give advice which they might then see across the front pages of the newspapers.
“Frankly, any parliamentarian who wants at some point to be in government is going to live to regret their vote last night.”
She said that the amendment proposed by fellow Tory Dominic Grieve which was passed on Tuesday, giving MPs the chance to vote on a “plan B” proposal if nothing has been agreed by January, did not mean that MPs could block a no-deal Brexit.
“The government is committed to leaving the European Union in line with the referendum and unless government were to do something completely different to change tack, or indeed to pass this deal, then we will be leaving the EU on 29 March next year without a deal,” she said.
Asked whether Theresa May was the right person to lead the government, she said: “She certainly is at the moment.”
Leadsom, one of few long-term Brexiters who have stuck with May’s deal, argued that MPs had not properly read the deal on offer.
“There has been an awful lot of misinformation about what’s in this deal,” she said.
Leadsom’s interview followed that of Mark Harper, the former Tory chief whip. He told Today that the prime minister had to go back to Brussels to demand the backstop came out of the deal to eliminate a wedge between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
“She should listen to Conservative colleagues … It would undermine the UK common market and threaten the integrity of the UK by creating a customs and regulatory border down the Irish Sea,” he said.
Harper urged the prime minister to return to Brussels to attempt to negotiate a new deal before the leaving date of 29 March.
“There will be new facts on the table and she will have to go back to our European partners,” he said.
Even if May did win Tuesday’s vote, she would not be able to govern because the DUP would withdraw support, Harper said.
“If the deal goes through, we will be in office but unable to govern and we saw what happened yesterday,” he said.
Justine Greening, the former education secretary and a remainer, called for a three-option second referendum to see the government through the current chaos, warning that without it “we could be debating Brexit not for the next five days but for the next five years”.
“This is less about the future of the Tory party but more about how we can bring the country together.”
The parliamentary veteran and former minister Oliver Letwin called for the government to move towards a “Norway-plus” deal – an alternative that would keep the UK in the EU single market, through membership of the European Economic Area, the 31-country zone that covers EU member states plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
Promoted by the Conservative former minister Nick Boles, the Norway-plus option also means joining the European Free Trade Area, which also includes Switzerland.
Letwin told the programme: “There is a very high possibility that the deal will be voted down.
“If I was a betting man, I would say that all the motions will fail.
“If we have a Norway-plus solution, the whole issue of a backstop falls away.”
Dominic Raab, the former government lawyer who resigned from his post as Brexit secretary over his opposition to May’s deal, told the Today programme that only a new law could stop Brexit now.
“I think the Grieve amendment was predictable but what we need to understand is that resolutions that parliament pass have some [political] impact, but they are not legally binding.
“And therefore if the deal is voted down on Tuesday I think what will matter most of all will not be what parliament says in a motion – it will need legislation to stop Brexit – what will matter is the will and resolve in No 10 Downing Street,” he said.