Labour ‘ready to bring down Government’
Party will act if deal vote is lost
LABOUR has warned they will seek to bring down Theresa May’s Government if she loses next week’s crunch Brexit vote.
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said his party would move a vote of no-confidence if the House of Commons failed to back her deal.
More than 100 Tory MPs are prepared to reject it next Tuesday.
Mr Starmer said yesterday: “If the Prime Minister has lost a vote of that significance, then there has to be a question of confidence in the Government.
“I think it’s inevitable we will seek to move that.”
But Michael Gove said there was “absolutely” no way Mrs May would resign if she lost. The Environment Secretary admitted that he was “uncomfortable” with parts of her deal but warned: “There is a real risk if we don’t vote for this deal, there may be a majority in the House of Commons for a second referendum.” Mr Gove said another poll would “rip apart the social fabric of the country” and insult people who voted Leave in 2016.
He said: “Why are we asking people again – on the basis they got it wrong the last time around? They were too thick to make the decision, then, were they?” Meanwhile the PM faces a Commons ambush today over No10’s refusal to release the full legal advice on her withdrawal agreement. Labour, the DUP, the SNP and Brexiteer Tories are writing to Speaker John Bercow to demand she complies with a vote calling for it to be made available.
The Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, is reported to have advised the UK could be trapped in the Irish backstop “indefinitely”.
Mr Gove insisted the backstop was worse for the EU than the UK.
He said: “We will have tariff-free access to their markets without paying a penny. And, more than that, we will have control of our borders.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will travel to London today to urge opposition MPs to vote down Mrs May and push for an extension to Brexit trigger Article 50.
She said: “With so much at stake for people’s jobs and living standards, it is vital MPs come together.”
IN an unsettled country with a deadlocked Parliament, another referendum is also Theresa May’s best Brexit option.
Her Tory enemies and the Labour leadership will race to pass votes of no confidence in a humiliated Prime Minister after the now inevitable crushing defeat in the House of Commons on December 11.
By rights she should resign, accepting she’s failed miserably by uniting a majority of MPs against her worst of all worlds.
Instead, Downing Street desperately spins the ailing PM as a Tyson Fury mini-me in high heels and haute couture, a PM who gets knocked down then gets up again.
Yet each ministerial resignation and study costing the Brexit plan’s expensive disaster paints a picture of a clueless Noel Edmonds loser, Deluded of Downing Street significantly less popular in this political jungle than she foolishly believes.
To ask the nation to decide between her Brexit draft deal or remaining in the European Union would be bold, the only way to end the stalemate. We know most MPs reject the no-deal catastrophe of obsessive Mogglodytes wishing to reinvent the 18th century. A week tomorrow we’ll discover by how many they oppose May’s scam to sell employment, wages, prosperity, security and sovereignty for £39billion. What we need to decide is what happens next when the clock’s ticking towards 11pm on Friday, March 29, 2019.
May’s publicly set herself against a so-called people’s vote though we all recall she changed her mind about a general election last year.
Today there’s no consensus in Parliament for a referendum UKIP Brextremist Nigel Farage could consider the “unfinished business” he predicted had the close result in 2016 gone 52-48 the other way.
Cabinet ministers are acknowledging the possibility including Jeremy Wright, Michael Gove and a Jeremy Hunt who two years ago toyed with advocating it when calculating a challenge to May for the Tory tiara.
Labour’s heading that way too so the only people who fear the democracy of another referendum should be Brextremists liars petrified they couldn’t pull on another giant con job.
The direction of travel’s clear without any guarantee the destination will be reached.
But with Parliament deadlocked, a fresh question before Christmas will be: If not a referendum, then what?