THERESA’S ULTIMATUM

Challenge to MPs as she delays vote and EU says Brexit could slip to 2021

Theresa May embarked on a high-stakes gamble last night after revealing a final vote on her Brexit plan could be delayed until just 17 days before Britain is due to leave the european Union.

Defying Cabinet calls to delay departure and take No Deal ‘off the table’, the Prime Minister appealed to o remainer ministers for another fortnight to win concessions enough from Brussels.

Mrs May said she was making progress in talks but not to hold a second ‘meaningful vote’ this week. Instead she set a new deadline of March 12 to win approval of a plan that suffered a shattering Commons defeat last month.

This means pro-remain ministers will now have to decide whether to follow through with threats to defy Mrs May and vote for a backbench bid on Wednesday to postpone the Brexit date.

If the backbench motion is passed, Mrs May would have until March 13 to get her plan through Parliament or be forced to seek a delay in the process.

That would set up a showdown on March 12 when eurosceptics could be asked to back a deal they dislike or face the possibility of Parliament forcing a postponement of Brexit the following day.

Civil servants have told the PM there is unlikely to be enough time to pass Brexit legislation because of the delayed vote. One minister told the Daily Telegraph if the deal goes through at that point Mrs May would probably ask for a twomonth extension to article 50.

Last night it emerged that the eU may insist that Brexit is delayed until 2021 if the UK requests an extension to reach a final agreement.

Mrs May’s dramatic gamble came 24 hours after amber rudd, David Gauke and Greg Clark signalled they could quit the Cabinet this week to back the backbench move themselves unless a withdrawal agreement is in place.

at least a dozen more ministers are considering their positions – potentially enough to allow the motion proposed by Labour’s Yvette Cooper and Tory sir Oliver Letwin to pass.

Writing in the Daily Mail at the weekend, the Cabinet trio warned that ‘if there is no breakthrough in the coming week’ there was a clear majority in Parliament to delay Brexit rather than ‘crash out’.

The ministers, who all campaigned for remain, described No Deal as disastrous, saying it would ‘see us poorer, less secure and potentially splitting up’. Their intervention led eurosceptic MPs to call for them to be sacked.

speaking on a flight to an eUarab League summit in egypt, the Prime Minister insisted she still believed that ‘ no deal is better than a bad deal’. But she refused to criticise the rebel trio and ducked questions about whether the fragile state of her Government made the ministers ‘unsackable’.

Mrs May said: ‘Collective responsibility has not broken down. What we’ve seen around the Cabinet table, in the party, in the country at large is strong views on the issue of europe. That’s not a surprise.

‘We have around the Cabinet table a collective, not just responsibility, but desire to actually ensure we leave the eU with a deal. That’s what we’re working for, that’s what I’m working for.

‘We’ve been having positive talks with the eU. as you know we were in Brussels last week, my team will be back in Brussels again this coming week. They will be returning to Brussels this Tuesday.

‘as a result of that we won’t bring a meaningful vote to Parliament this week, but we will ensure that happens by March 12. It is still within our grasp to leave the eU with a deal on March 29.’

Mrs May is holding talks with angela Merkel today in the hope the German chancellor can break the deadlock in Brussels.

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan smith last night said that by delaying the meaningful vote, Mrs May was effectively ‘calling the bluff’ of the Cabinet rebels. ‘ They are smashing the whole concept of government,’ he said. ‘If they resign

‘Recklessly running down the clock’

and this Brexit delay goes through then we will end up in a general election and these people need to be deselected because they are going to be responsible for delivering a Corbyn government.’

Miss Cooper’s plan would enable Parliament to take control and pass legislation requiring the Government to extend article 50 if there is no agreement by March 13. The timeline is almost identical to one set out by Mrs May’s chief Brexit negotiator Olly robbins when he was overheard discussing the Government’s strategy in a bar.

sir Keir starmer, Labour’s Brexit spokesman, described the latest delay as ‘the height of irresponsibility’ and accused the PM of ‘recklessly running down the clock in a desperate attempt to force MPs to choose between her deal and No Deal. Parliament cannot stand by and allow this happen.’

eU Council president Donald Tusk is said to be resistant to the idea of a short extension, fearing the two sides could find themselves still deadlocked in a few months’ time. Mr Tusk held talks with Mrs May in egypt last night.

OUR legislature is in a state of near-paralysis, somehow unable to reach any sort of agreement on how to leave the European Union and thus honour the 2016 referendum. So apparently it has nothing better to do than indulge in displacement activity and virtue-signalling.

If you think I am being unfair, you should know that on Thursday MPs spent an afternoon arguing that the Government should ban the consumption of dog meat.

This follows a Bill proposed by the Conservative MP Bill Wiggin, seeking to make eating dogs a criminal offence in this country. MPs have also raised it with the Prime Minister directly (as if she didn’t have enough on her, um, plate).

Now, you might say, it is a terrible thing to eat a dog. Personally, I wouldn’t do so. If any of our four dogs died, I would give them a decent burial, never for a moment considering whether I should pop them in the oven and serve them up with potatoes and vegetables on the side.

Taboo

But here’s the thing: I am not alone in rejecting such a dish. I share that fastidiousness with the entire population of the United Kingdom. To be specific, there are no recorded instances — none, zero — of anyone eating dog meat in this country. At least not deliberately.

It is already illegal to sell dog meat. It is already illegal to slaughter dogs for the purpose of consumption.

Vets do, of course, put down dogs — euthanasia is allowed for pets, as it is not (yet) for unwanted or demented old folk. But I am assured by officials at Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) that as vets typically put down dogs with a lethal injection of barbiturates, the dead pets would be unfit for human consumption (and so banned under existing food hygiene laws).

None of these facts have given those arguing for legislation to ban the eating of dogs any pause for thought.

Thus the MP initiating last week’s debate, Jim Shannon of the Democratic Unionist Party, admitted that ‘there are no cases of dog or cat meat being eaten in the United Kingdom’. Nevertheless, he added: ‘We should make explicitly clear that the totally unnecessary practice of eating dogs should never be welcome.’

But, Jim, no one is thinking of welcoming it. It is taboo in the UK, just as cannibalism is, and therefore requires no legal enforcement. There is no law in this country criminalising the consumption of humans, for the same reason.

The Ulsterman spoke — as all those speaking in the debate did — about his intimate relationship with our canine companions: ‘Since I was a young boy, dogs have played a huge part in my life. I remember my first dog, in Ballywater when I was a four-year-old, very well. It was a collie dog called Flash. Its name has never escaped my mind …’

Very moving. But scarcely justification for a new law which will make not the teeny-tiniest difference to the life of a single pooch.

Delicacy

The proponents of such a measure dispute that. They argue that if Parliament acted in this way, it would ‘send a message’ to countries such as China and South Korea, where dogs are indeed eaten.

One of the MPs claimed that Parliament banning dog meat consumption in Great Britain (where it doesn’t take place anyway) ‘ would have a tremendous effect worldwide. A ban would send a powerful message to countries where this horrific and disturbing practice takes place’.

Really? I don’t imagine that legislators in the Chinese People’s Congress would exclaim: ‘Oh, look — the British are saying we aren’t doing enough to stop our people eating dogs. We must do better and follow their great example!’ In fact, China some years ago passed laws making it illegal to sell dog meat for consumption. The problem is that it remains a popular delicacy in many parts of that vast nation, and enforcing the law there is not as easy as it is in Surrey — where (forgive me for labouring the point) people don’t eat dogs and don’t require a law to punish them for doing so.

In short, this measure would be nothing more than virtue signalling. That is, a statement or act designed to make the instigator feel or look good, but which has no other effect.

Virtuous

This was more or less acknowledged by the Tory MP Giles Watling, perhaps the dog consumption ban’s most persistent parliamentary proponent: ‘Even if it is virtue-signalling, I say, “Why not?”

‘Let’s signal our virtue — our morality — on this issue to the rest of the world.’

Yes, let our MPs tell the world how virtuous we are: its billions of inhabitants are all bound to admire our self-praise.

But there is a serious point here. As the Defra minister David Rutley pointed out, it would be very difficult, even supposing a complaint had been made and a video somehow obtained of the cooking process, to prove that someone had actually eaten dog meat.

How would the police establish it? Blood tests of the alleged dog- eater? More invasive procedures? Let’s not go there. I’m sure the police wouldn’t want to.

And what would be the sentence if any (so far non- existent) British dog eater were successfully prosecuted?

This would all involve primary legislation. Its proponents apparently think this would be a sensible use of Parliamentary time when the imminence of Brexit means an unprecedented torrent of legislation needs to be passed in the coming weeks. The Government estimates it will need to pass more than 500 statutory instruments between now and Brexit day.

You could argue that Parliament is already making a dog’s dinner of Brexit. But that’s no reason for MPs to make even bigger fools of themselves.