May in EU dash as Tories plot
THERESA May went on a frantic round of shuttle diplomacy across Europe yesterday in an attempt to get more concessions on her Brexit deal as Tory MPs at home circled around her premiership.
May insisted last night she would get clarification on the backstop arrangement designed to avoid a hard border in Ireland.
She said: “There is a shared determination to deal with this issue and address this problem.
“The deal we’ve negotiated is a deal that honours the referendum. It’s the only deal available. And the backstop, which is the issue that Parliament has raised, is a necessary guarantee for the people of Northern Ireland.”
But as she spoke, senior Tory sources claimed the 48 letters needed to kick off a no confidence vote in the PM had been receved by Graham Brady, chairman of the party’s 1922 committee, putting May’s premiership in jeopardy.
In a sign of May’s troubles when she arrived in Berlin at lunchtime, the Prime Minister had difficulty getting out of the black limousine which drove her up to a red carpet to meet German chancellor Angela Merkel.
It took several attempts to open the locked car door, prompting the German media to joke that May could find no exit.
Merkel said she had excluded the possibility of reopening Brexit talks, adding: “We said there will be no further opening of the exit deal.”
But she added she remained confident a solution to the impasse could be found.
May also met European Commission president JeanClaude Juncker in Brussels as well as Dutch PM Mark Rutte.
Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who will welcome May to Dublin today, said he hoped to reassure the UK without changing the fundamental substance of the withdrawal deal, including the backstop.
He added: “Our approach is we have a deal on the table. Our objective is to get the deal ratified by the Commons.”
In the Commons, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn labelled May the “runaway Prime Minister” and said the trip was a “waste of time and public money”.
In other developments, Downing Street said a Commons vote on the Brexit deal will be held before January 21 and Brexit minister Robin Walker told MPs he hoped it “would be sooner than that”.
The Cabinet are meeting today after PMQs to step up preparations for a no-deal exit from the EU.
John Major has said Article 50 must be “immediately” revoked to give MPs time to find a way out of the crisis. The ex-PM said: “The clock, for the moment, must be stopped.”