May in plea for calm over Brexit
Theresa May told Tory MPs it was time for “cool, calm heads to prevail” as she insisted a deal on Brexit was “achievable” in the face of a cabinet revolt.
The British prime minister said Euroskeptic MPs were “rightly” concerned that Britain might be left in “permanent limbo” under a customs union backstop after Brexit, but she refused to meet their demands for a hard time limit to be included in the agreement.
Instead she suggested she would include an “exit clause” to ensure the U.K. was not “trapped” in a customs union. May will present the plans at cabinet Tuesday, where sources suggested she is likely to win support for the approach from a majority of ministers and stave off resignation threats.
Euroskeptic Tory MPs claimed that the row between the EU and the U.K. was being deliberately “choreographed” in an attempt to force through her Brexit plan known as Chequers. The claim was denied by Downing Street and Brussels.
Monday night eight cabinet ministers with concerns about the backstop plan met over pizza in the office of Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the Commons.
Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said a no-deal Brexit was “more likely than ever before” before the opening of a EU summit Wednesday. He added: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, William Hague, the former Conservative leader, says it is now time for the U.K. to go “full throttle” with preparations for a no-deal Brexit and prepare itself “psychologically and politically.”
Hague warns that the Conservative Party has been “stretched to breaking point” and that the deal on the table is not “sellable.”
He says: “When the cabinet assembles this morning, it now seems very unlikely that they can collectively accept any proposed EU withdrawal agreement on the table, and indeed that they would in any case be unwise to do so. Such a situation may well be a cause of intense frustration for the prime minister, who has made a heroic effort to bring her party, Parliament and the Brussels leadership to the brink of a workable deal, but if reports of the latest drafts are to be believed, it is not sellable in Britain.”
He adds that no-deal preparations should be intensified: “A no-deal Brexit is extremely undesirable and might be prevented by Parliament, but since it could happen it has to be prepared for psychologically and politically, not just logistically.”