Theresa May to speak to every EU leader in bid to break Brexit deadlock
LONDON — British Prime Minister Theresa May on Saturday vowed to speak to every EU member state leader “over the coming days”, as she wrote to Conservative MPs to appeal for unity over Brexit.
In the letter to her fractious colleagues, excerpts of which were released by Downing Street late on Saturday, May urged the party to “move beyond what divides us”.
The embattled British leader said ruling Tories need to sacrifice “personal preferences” for the “higher service of the national interest”.
The plea came after May last week suffered another parliamentary defeat over Brexit, suggesting a short-lived period of party unity over reforming her draft EU divorce deal may not survive.
On Thursday night, MPs rejected a motion expressing support for May’s efforts to seek changes to her under-fire agreement, after members of her own Conservative party abstained.
In her letter to lawmakers on Saturday, the prime minister called the vote “disappointing” but insisted she would keep seeking to secure changes to the so-called backstop arrangement in the deal.
Her office revealed she planned “to speak to the leader of every EU member state in the coming days”.
“I do not underestimate how deeply or how sincerely colleagues hold the views which they do on this important issue,” May told Tories, referring to Brexit.
“But I believe that a failure to make the compromises necessary … will let down the people who sent us to represent them,” she warned.
“Our party can do what it has done so often in the past: move beyond what divides us and come together behind what unites us.”
May confirmed she would return to Brussels this week for further talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay would on Monday meet EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier to discuss proposals put forward by a new “working group” of British lawmakers exploring alternatives to the backstop, according to her office.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox will on Tuesday make a speech “setting out what changes would be required to eliminate the legal risk we could be trapped in backstop indefinitely”, Street said.
Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29, but its parliament last month rejected a draft divorce deal May negotiated with the bloc, prompting fears the country could crash out without a deal next month. Downing
“I felt absolute hatred and, unfortunately, this is not the first time,” Finkielkraut, 69, told Journal du Dimanche.
“I would have been afraid if there had not been the police, fortunately they were there,” he told the newspaper, while adding that not all the demonstrators were hostile toward him and one even suggested he put on a vest and join the demonstration while another hailed his work.
Finkielkraut has expressed his solidarity and sympathy with the “yellow vest” protestors from the outset but in an interview published on Saturday in Le Figaro, he criticized the leaders of the movement, saying that “arrogance has changed sides”.
Saturday’s incident triggered a wave of condemnation and messages of support for the philosopher.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said it was “simply intolerable”.
Ian Brossat, chief French Communist Party candidate for the European Parliament, said “We can hate Finkielkraut’s ideas”, but “nothing can justify attacking him as a Jew”.
Finkielkraut, who is seen as having pro-establishment beliefs, has since January 2016 been a member of the French Academy, the prestigious institution in charge of defining the French language.
Fourteen political parties on Thursday launched a call for action against anti-Semitism after the interior ministry reported a 74 percent increase in anti-Jewish acts last year.