May’s last plea for support on Brexit
THERESA May has issued a last-ditch plea for MPs to back her Brexit deal, after Brussels chiefs issued a letter offering assurances that they do not want the controversial “backstop” to be permanent.
Speaking in a factory in Leave-voting Stoke-on-Trent, the Prime Minister said the letter from European Council president Donald Tusk and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker made clear that the backstop was “not a threat or a trap”.
And she said she was committed to working with MPs from across the House to ensure that workers’ rights and environmental standards were protected after Brexit.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox issued advice that EU assurances on the backstop “would have legal force in international law”, and said the current deal “now represents the only politically practicable and available means of securing our exit from the EU”.
But Mrs May’s hopes that the letter would win over enough MPs to rescue her Withdrawal Agreement looked set to be dashed, as the Democratic Unionist Party – which props up her minority administration – dismissed it as “meaningless”.
“Rather than reassure us, the Tusk and Juncker letter bolsters our concerns,” said DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds, who called on the PM to demand changes to the Agreement itself.
And Tory MP Gareth Johnson quit as an assistant whip to oppose Mrs May’s plan, saying it was clear there was “no significant change” to the Withdrawal Agreement.
Mrs May warned that MPs would be behaving with the “height of recklessness” if they rejected her Withdrawal Agreement in today’s historic vote, when no alternative deal was on offer.
With expectations high at Westminster that the Prime Minister is heading for a crushing defeat, Mrs May issued a plea to MPs concerned about the danger of a no-deal Brexit to back her.
“The only ways to guarantee we do not leave without a deal are: to abandon Brexit, betraying the vote of the British people; or to leave with a deal, and the only deal on the table is the one MPs will vote on (today),” she said.
She was speaking as Conservative former ministers Nick Boles, Sir Oliver Letwin and Nicky Morgan put forward a plan to give Parliament control over the Brexit process if Mrs May loses today’s vote.
Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, meanwhile, criticised “complicated jiggerypokery” by MPs, warning they were “really playing with fire”.
He said: “I think that people will feel betrayed. And I think they will feel that there has been a great conspiracy by the deep state of the UK, the people who really run the country.”
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Commons Northern Ireland Committee, Andrew Murrison, tabled an amendment to the Brexit motion to create a “sunset clause” preventing the backstop extending beyond the end of 2021.