TORY REBELS DEAL NEW BLOW TO MAY
PM is defeated in Commons vote on Brexit strategy after hardline Eurosceptics refuse to back her
HARDLINE Eurosceptics faced a Tory backlash last night after denting Theresa May’s hopes of winning concessions from Brussels.
Ministers attacked European Research Group members after they sat on their hands to allow Jeremy Corbyn to defeat the PM’s Brexit strategy.
Downing Street and Cabinet ministers, including Brexiteer Liam Fox, had pleaded with Tory MPs to put on a show of unity in the Commons to strengthen Mrs May’s hand in EU talks. But hardliners accused No 10 of playing tricks, and refused to back the Government, allowing a vote on Mrs May’s negotiating strategy to be defeated by 303 votes to 258. A triumphant Mr Corbyn warned Mrs May – who did not stay to hear the result – to change tack, saying there was ‘no majority’ for her strategy. But a No 10 spokesman said: ‘Jeremy Corbyn yet again put partisan considerations ahead of the national interest – and yet again, by voting against the Government’s motion, he is in effect voting to make No Deal more likely.’
Five Tory MPs sided with Labour in the vote, with a further 66 abstaining. Eighty per cent of the rebels were members of the ERG.
Rebels included the group’s chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson, along with Dominic Raab, Priti Patel and Iain Duncan Smith. The vote sparked a Tory civil war.
Business minister Richard Harrington accused the ERG of ‘treachery’ and urged them to join Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party. Defence minister Tobias Ellwood said the group was acting as ‘a party within a
‘They are a party within a party’
party’, while a senior Cabinet minister described it as ‘bonkers’.
The vote, on a motion for Parliament to ‘reiterate its support for the approach to leaving the EU’, came hours after the Prime Minister spoke to EU leaders, including Angela Merkel, in the hope of securing a Brexit breakthrough. No 10 said she would plough on in the hope of winning concessions on the Irish backstop.
But Tory sources acknowledged her chances would be damaged by last night’s vote. It came as:
Ministers agreed to publish confidential Cabinet papers on the impact of No Deal to head off a second Commons defeat;
Dozens of Labour MPs rebelled in a separate vote to call for Brexit to be delayed, with sources of a breakaway to form a new party;
Brussels sources revealed Mr Corbyn will meet EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier next week;
Dutch PM Mark Rutte stepped up his attack on Brexit, saying it would leave the UK ‘too small to have presence on the world stage on its own’.
Last night’s defeat came after Eurosceptic MPs took objection to the motion, saying it implied a No Deal Brexit would be ruled out.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay appealed to them to fall in line, saying No Deal was still ‘on the table’. That angered Remain Tories, several of whom then abstained. Former minister Justine Greening said: ‘The Government cannot simply just pick and choose which votes they will support. That is fundamentally
wrong and anti- democratic.’ Mr Barclay’s assurances also failed to satisfy hardline Brexiteers. Peter Bone said: ‘The motion that we are voting on... takes No Deal off the table. It does not matter what ministers have said.’
The ERG decision to pick a fight appeared to be motivated by anger over unguarded comments from Mrs May’s chief Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins in a Brussels bar in which he suggested Mrs May would rather order a ‘long’ delay to the UK’s departure than leave without a deal next month.
Mr Raab said voting for the PM’s motion ‘risks implying that we cannot leave on WTO terms on March 29.
‘That would be the wrong message as a matter of policy to send to the EU at this crunch moment in the talks, not least given some of the unfortunate remarks reported by ITV by the leader of the civil service delegation in Brussels.’
Tory moderate Alister Jack warned hardliners in his own party they would have to compromise. ‘If you want to leave on March 29 you have to not only hold your nerve, you have to hold your nose and vote for her deal,’ he said.
Mr Ellwood rounded on the ERG, saying: ‘They are acting as a party within a party. There is a deal to be decided, there is still work to be done, and yet tonight we see the ERG halting the Government, not supporting the Conservative Party.
‘That is not necessary and it’s also provocative.’