May: I’ll let MPs kill off my deal if you don’t help me

THERESA May warned EU leaders yesterday that she would allow MPs to kill off her Brexit deal next week unless they agreed to consider further concessions on the Irish border issue.

The Prime Minister said Britain could be forced to leave the EU without a deal if they did not give ground.

Mrs May issued her dramatic ultimatum at a private meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Emmanuel Macron, EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, EU Council president Donald Tusk and Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte. She said that without the promise of help she would put her Brexit deal to a vote in the Commons next week.

With more than 100 Tory MPs and her DUP partners currently opposed to it, the deal faced certain defeat on a scale likely to kill it off forever.

Downing Street last night refused to confirm that Mrs May had threatened to crash her own deal. But sources said she was preparing to bring back the vote to the Commons next week if they had continued their hardline stance.

Last night the gamble appeared to have paid off, with Mrs May telling reporters she was now convinced the EU was willing to budge on the Irish backstop, which critics claim could leave the UK trapped in a customs union against its will.

It came after a stormy Brussels summit at which EU leaders stonewalled on help to save the PM’s Brexit deal – and she rounded on Mr Juncker for apparently describing her demands as ‘nebulous and imprecise’.

Mrs May had appeared to come away virtually empty-handed from the summit. But, speaking at a defiant press conference, she insisted she could get the refinements needed in time for a vote on her deal, which she has promised by January 21. ‘I never said it was going to be easy,’ she added.

Speaking after her private meeting yesterday with the EU chiefs, the PM said: ‘My discussions with colleagues today have shown that further clarification and discussion following the Council’s conclusions is in fact possible.

‘There is work still to do and we will be holding talks in coming days about how to obtain the further assurances that the UK Parliament needs in order to be able to approve the deal.’

The Irish backstop is designed to prevent the emergence of a hard border on the island of Ireland if trade talks falter. But critics fear it could leave the UK trapped in a customs union against its will for years.

It is understood Mrs May asked for assurances on a future trade deal – which would negate the need for the backstop – should be added to the withdrawal agreement.

Mrs May was seeking assurances with ‘legal force’ that the backstop could only be ‘temporary’.

EU leaders were supposed to sign up to a series of summit conclusions declaring that the backstop ‘does not represent a desirable outcome for the EU’. A proposed phrasing also suggested that if the backstop were used it would only apply for a ‘short period’.

But both of these phrases were stripped out of the final conclusions following a row over dinner between the other 27 leaders.

‘I never said it was going to be easy’

NO- ONE can pretend this week was anything other than a brutally difficult one for Theresa May.

On Monday she was forced to pull the plug on the Brexit vote in the knowledge that putting her deal before Parliament would end in certain defeat.

Barely 48 hours later came the bombshell news that after months of overestimating their support, the rebels had eventually mustered enough letters from Tory MPs to force a confidence vote in her leadership.

During a frantic day of arm-twisting, she bowed to pressure by accepting – in an emotional address to the 1922 Committee – that she would not fight the next election.

But she emerged from 10 Downing Street on Wednesday night victorious – and with nearly two thirds of her MPs backing her, it was a decisive win.

Then on Thursday she had to endure yet another ambush in Brussels. At a late night press conference, thirsty Luxembourger and European Commission President JeanClaude Juncker accused her of being ‘nebulous and imprecise’ when asking EU leaders to address concerns about the Northern Ireland backstop. She had been nothing of the sort.

Yesterday morning she showed her steel by confronting Mr Juncker in the full glare of the cameras, her handbag in her grasp. It was reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher at her most defiant.

So despite all her travails, Mrs May fights on, bloodied but unbowed.

She has demonstrated once again her tremendous reserves of resilience and fortitude and continues to display the confidence of a leader who knows the path she is taking is the right one.

Whether through ineptitude or malice on the part of EU leaders, there was no decisive outcome from the summit. But the battle is not over yet, and there is every indication that in the New Year Mrs May will get what she needs – an assurance that the Northern Ireland backstop will not endure indefinitely.

Any failure by the EU to offer significant concessions would be an act of monumental folly. It would risk an accidental no deal at a time when sclerotic European economies can ill afford the economic damage that would cause.

Would Emmanuel Macron further endanger the French economy (unemployment 9 per cent) when the country is engulfed by the ‘gilets jaunes’ riots?

Contrast the eurozone’s struggles with the UK, where unemployment is at its lowest since the 1970s and wages are rising at their fastest rate for a decade. The EU cannot afford to say ‘non’ any longer.

Next week the Parliamentary term ends. For a public tired of endless squabbling about Brexit this cannot come too soon. In the Commons on Monday Mrs May will have to endure howls of outrage from all sides that she has not – yet – secured the guarantees she sought.

Despite their coup attempt going down in flames, the hard-line Brexiteers will once again call for her to quit. When are they going to realise they lost and that Mrs May’s deal could be their last hope for leaving Europe?

Inevitably, Jeremy Corbyn will continue to blather senselessly, while lacking anything resembling a Brexit policy. Equally predictable is the continued peacocking of ambitious Tory ministers keen to press their leadership credentials, instead of rallying behind the Prime Minister – whatever their reservations about the deal.

Meanwhile Mrs May – who more than ever appears to be the only adult in the room – will soldier on. She deserves the time, and space, to secure what assurances she can before putting them to Parliament.

And MPs from all sides – if they can stop their posturing for five minutes – should wait and consider these safeguards carefully before cynically dismissing them.