WE’RE ON A NO DEAL KNIFE EDGE
May in dramatic TV plea to salvage Brexit deal ++ She warns MPs: Britain’s had enough ++ Corbyn flounces out of crunch talks ++ And EU’s latest ultimatum means...
THERESA May last night told MPs to end their ‘ political games’ and deliver Brexit. With the UK just eight days from a No Deal departure, she went on live TV to condemn the Commons for failing to back her EU withdrawal agreement. The Prime Minister will travel to Brussels today to ask for an extension until the end of June to try to get her plan through. She said the delay to the planned March 29 exit date, which she had promised to keep more than 100 times in Parliament, was ‘a matter of great personal regret’.
She hinted she would rather quit or leave with No Deal than allow delay ‘to give more time for politicians to argue’. Donald Tusk had raised the stakes by warning an extension to Article 50 would be agreed only if MPs
approved her deal. This opened up the possibility that the UK could leave without a deal next Friday.
‘I believe that a short extension would be possible,’ said Mr Tusk, who is president of the European Council.
‘But it would be conditional on a positive vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons.’
He said the hopes of a deal now seemed ‘frail, even illusory’ but said the EU would not give up. He suggested an emergency Brussels summit could be held at the end of next week, just hours before Britain is due to leave, to consider offering the UK a much longer extension – at a price.
Government sources last night indicated Mrs May would make a third – and probably final – attempt to persuade MPs to approve her deal next week, possibly as soon as Monday.
Speaking 1,000 days after the UK voted to leave the EU, Mrs May warned MPs they would never be forgiven if they failed to deliver Brexit.
Addressing the public directly, she said: ‘Of this I am absolutely sure, you the public have had enough, you are tired of the infighting, you are tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real con-
‘Talking about nothing else’
cerns about our children’s schools, our National Health Service, knife crime. You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with.’
Ministers still hope they can win the backing of the DUP and persuade more moderate Eurosceptics to back the deal. But they have all but abandoned hope of persuading the two dozen Brexit hardliners holding out for No Deal.
Instead they are focusing on Labour MPs, particularly those in Leave- supporting areas, who they believe might reluctantly back Mrs May’s plan rather than allow the UK to crash out next week.
Last night some MPs suggested her comments could backfire, with one warning they could spark attacks on MPs.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson is urging Mrs May to give Tory MPs a free vote next week in the hope of making it easier for Labour MPs to vote for the deal. In other developments: Jeremy Corbyn walked out of cross-party crisis talks with the Prime Minister last night in protest at the presence of exLabour MP Chuka Umunna;
Reports from France suggested President Emmanuel Macron is ready to veto any request for a Brexit delay, meaning the UK will leave on March 29 with or without a deal;
Arch Remainer Dominic Grieve said he was ‘ashamed’ to be a Conservative and warned: ‘We are going to spiral down into oblivion and the worst part of it all is that we will deserve it’;
Mrs May held talks with opposition leaders in the hope of securing their support for a deal next week to prevent the UK crashing out;
The European Parliament’s Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt said: ‘The only relevant question now is if Prime Minister May can muster a crossparty majority by next week’;
The Liberal Democrats and SNP called for Parliament to prepare to revoke Article 50 ‘as a last resort’;
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker warned that the UK would have to hold elections to the European parliament if it wanted to delay beyond May 23;
Tory hardliners called for the Prime Minister to resign, with Peter Bone accusing her to her face of ‘betraying the British people’;
A SkyData poll found that 90 per cent of voters believe the Brexit negotiations have been a ‘national humiliation’.
Mrs May’s decision to rule out a long delay stunned Cabinet Remainers who believed she was ready to sign up to the proposal in order to remove the risk of No Deal. The decision was taken by the PM in the early hours of yesterday and released to the media before ministers were told.
It came a week after her deputy David Lidington told MPs: ‘A short one- off extension would be downright reckless.’
A senior Remainer accused Mrs May of caving in to Brexiteer Cabinet ministers, who had threatened to quit rather than allow a long delay. The minister said: ‘No Deal has got more likely. The ERG hardliners are never going to vote for it now because they have got the prospect of No Deal.’
Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of the Conservatives, said: ‘Why are we on bended knee to the EU begging for things we don’t need?
‘Next week should be a simple choice between her deal and No Deal. If it isn’t then it will be a national humiliation.’
Another former leader, William Hague, warned that the chances of an imminent election were rising fast.
He also warned of a ‘longer and longer’ delay to Brexit.
THE Queen addresses the nation once a year on Christmas Day. Otherwise, it’s considered distinctly un-British for national leaders to go on TV and directly address the population.
Dictators such as Vladimir Putin do it all the time. So do American presidents.
Donald Trump, needless to say, does it a lot. He’s keen to share his opinions with voters.
But this sort of thing doesn’t normally happen in this country outside of general elections.
British prime ministers usually only appear on the airwaves at primetime when there’s a national emergency. For example, Neville Chamberlain announcing the declaration of war over the wireless on September 3, 1939.
Tony Blair did it on the eve of the Iraq War. Britain, he said, ‘has never been a nation to hide at the back’.
Brutal
Mrs May last night made her own exception to this rule — appearing on the nation’s TV screens as Britons were happily watching Coronation Street or Holby City.
The rumours that something unusual was in the offing began to circulate early in the afternoon. Not long after, it was an open secret that Mrs May was going to play what in brutal truth was one of her very last cards.
Remember that Mrs May’s premiership is hanging by a thread. She’s exhausted. Having been repeatedly humiliated, she is fighting for her political life.
But at least she’s still afloat, just about, and last night she went over the heads of the nation’s MPs.
We may not be used to this sort of conduct in a parliamentary democracy. But Mrs May is a desperate politician trapped in the Last Chance Saloon.
Her Brexit withdrawal plan has been voted down twice by Parliament, each time by a massive majority. Mrs May knows that her plan will be dead and she finished if it fails again next week.
She framed the country’s do-or-die Brexit dilemma as a war between Parliament and the voters.
And, crucially, she told voters: ‘I am on your side.’
Which begged the question — which voters? Those 17.4 million who made it clear 1,001 days ago that they wanted Britain to leave the EU? Or Remainers still appalled by the idea of us leaving the biggest trading bloc in the world? Or those — increasing in number, I’d wager — caught somewhere in between?
Certainly, the PM appealed to a widespread feeling across the nation that wishes Brexit will just go away. Let’s get it done. Let’s get it over with. Let’s get on with the real business of government. It’s overshadowed all our lives for much, much too long.
And she was also sending out the strongest possible signal to the Right- wing rebels in her own party: vote for my deal or risk losing Brexit altogether.
Will her performance be enough?
Mrs May is making the calculation that her televised appeal will put pressure on the hardcore of European Research Group MPs to abandon their principled opposition to her deal.
Maybe her gamble will pay off.
It’s worth assessing what is most likely to happen over the next few days.
Mrs May flies to meet other European leaders in Brussels today to seek approval for a short extension of Article 50 until June 30.
Perhaps the curmudgeons will agree. Whatever the case, Brussels has Britain over a barrel. The Prime Minister is stuck in a horrible Catch 22. European Council President Donald Tusk warned yesterday that Britain could delay departure — but only if Parliament agrees Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement.
But Commons Speaker John Bercow won’t allow another vote unless the Withdrawal Agreement is changed. Facing this nightmare, it’s no wonder she made her desperate plea in front of the cameras.
Successful in her mission to Brussels or not, Mrs May would then have to return to London for an intense weekend of lobbying the Tory Brexiteer rebels.
These wily folk know Mrs May has almost run out of rope. Within minutes of her TV address, many were fulminating about her performance and making it clear that they will continue to block her.
Yesterday, she was forced into yet another U-turn when she reneged on her promise ( made 108 times) that Britain will leave the EU on March 29.
Worrying
Her reputation for flip-flops is becoming worrying. She ruled out holding a General Election in 2017. Then called one. She promised to put her withdrawal deal to MPs last December. Then delayed it.
Many of her own MPs fear she can no longer be relied on to keep her word.
This puts her Cabinet colleagues in an awkward position. Take, for example, her loyal ‘deputy’, David Lidington.
Last week he said ‘ a short, one- off extension’ would be ‘downright reckless’. Yesterday, he was left gasping as he watched his boss ask for one. Meanwhile, there were briefings on Monday that the PM was ready to dump her close Brexit adviser Olly Robbins. Those, too, were deeply unedifying — and, so far, that has not happened.
I am guessing that Bercow will agree next week to allow Parliament to vote one last time on the ‘meaningful vote’. Despite his guidance on Monday that he was minded not to allow her to come back for a third vote, he can hardly turn her down now.
Chaos
She will have achieved a substantial change that Bercow demanded.
Think of the latest developments like this: you’re ready to exchange contracts on a house on March 29 and you change the date at the last minute to June.
Is that a substantial change? You bet it is. Even rabid Europhile Bercow can surely spot that.
So, at last, there is a chance that Mrs May will prevail and that Britain will — finally — exit the EU.
If not, I fear Britain would enter a further period of chaos.
As matters stand, there are three potential Brexit options.
First, Speaker allows a third Brexit vote next week, and the Commons votes in support of the Prime Minister’s withdrawal deal.
If so, Brexit would take place in May.
If not, Britain heads towards the second scenario — a No Deal Brexit.
Finally, the House of Commons could seize control at the very last moment.
In 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock, a measure that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our own world.
The clock is currently set at two minutes to midnight. Time is very nearly up.
That’s exactly how Brexit feels. We are at two minutes to midnight.
No wonder she chose to address the nation. Now let’s see how MPs respond.