GEOFFREY COX IS THE TORIES’ NEWEST STAR

THERESA MAY’S newest recruit to the Cabinet is fast becoming one of the most influential in her push for Brexit.

Geoffrey Cox, who joined the Government senior ranks as Attorney General in July, has brought a barrister’s forensic eye to the detail of the EU deal.

The Queen’s Counsel, who was a surprise hit of the Tory conference with a Brussels-bashing speech, spotted the legal traps in new proposals from the EU for the Irish border last weekend.

Government insiders say he delivered a “masterful” demolition of the bafflingly complex plan for a “backstop to the backstop” during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting.

Mr Cox pointed out that the proposal would indefinitely tie the UK into rigorous treaty commitments that the country could not break without the risk of becoming an international pariah.

One source present in the room said: “Geoffrey was devastating. It swung the meeting.”

The Attorney General is said to have brought some much needed intellectual heft to Mrs May’s team. Before taking up his post, his career as a barrister made him Westminster’s highest-earning MP.

He took an annual pay cut of more than £600,000 to sit at the Cabinet table. His affable manner is said to be popular.

Brexiteers hope Mr Cox, who delivered an impassioned and closely argued Commons speech in favour of leaving the EU in the run-up to the 2016 referendum, is helping to harden the Prime Minister’s resolve in the final stages of the negotiations and hone her arguments. The Attorney General is even seen by some as, at last, filling the role of the stalwart Cabinet lieutenant and confidant that Mrs May has lacked throughout her premiership.

Some ministers believe she has long required a wise head to provide the same support that the late Tory statesman Willie Whitelaw gave Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s. The Iron Lady once said: “Every prime minister needs a Willie.” Perhaps Mrs May is finding that, when faced with the challenge of Brexit, what a prime minister really needs is a Cox.