PM TOLD: NO MORE EU COMPROMISES
Showdown after Tories urge May to be ‘more like a lion than a tortoise’
THERESA May’s chief whip is to hold crisis talks with Eurosceptic Tories after they warned they would not accept further compromises on Brexit.
Julian Smith will meet members of the powerful European Research Group tomorrow after senior figures signalled they will not tolerate moves to dilute the process of leaving the EU.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the 60-strong group’s chairman, suggested Eurosceptic support for Mrs May was conditional on her sticking to the plan for a clean break with Brussels outlined in last year’s Tory manifesto. One pro-Brexit minister said Eurosceptic MPs were on a ‘hair trigger’ because of concerns they would be ‘betrayed’ by a final deal with the EU.
Even a Remain-backing MP urged Mrs May to be bolder, saying policymaking needs to be less ‘tortoise’ and more ‘lion’.
Brexiteers were also branded ‘swivel-eyed’ by a senior minister who claimed they are mostly ‘elderly retired men’ without mortgages or young children’. Energy minister Claire Perry, a Remainer, berated those who accused MPs of being ‘traitors’ over the EU divorce bill.
In a WhatsApp message obtained by the Daily Telegraph Miss Perry, a former adviser to David Cameron, said: ‘The ‘sell out mob’ should be ignored. Listening to them means wrecking the economy in the short term... and I would hypothesise that they are mostly elderly retired men who do not have mortgages, schoolaged children or caring responsibilities so they represent the swivel-eyed few not the many we represent.’
The PM’s Brexit war cabinet will meet today for the first time since Chancellor Philip Hammond enraged Eurosceptics by claiming leaving the EU would lead to only ‘very modest’ changes.
Mr Rees-Mogg said he was ‘fully supporting’ Mrs May, but added: ‘As long as the Prime Minister and Government is consistent with its own stated policy, I don’t think there are any difficulties. Changing it is hard.’
He added: ‘I would be very surprised if in the end, the Prime Minister didn’t back her own policy.’
The MP said ‘alarm bells were ringing’ over reports the Government is trying to keep Britain in a customs union after Brexit. Former Tory Cabinet minister Theresa Villiers said the UK was heading towards a ‘dilution of Brexit’ unless Mrs May stuck to her promises.
Miss Villiers said there was a real danger that Britain could remain in the EU ‘in all but name’. Mrs May’s deputy David Lidington yesterday urged warring Tories to ‘come together’ and back the Prime Minister. But last night MPs from all wings of the party continued to voice unease that Brexit was paralysing the Government. Heidi Allen,
‘Get a grip and lead’
a prominent Remainer, said: ‘Good God, we need to get a grip and lead. We are letting this country down.’
Fellow Remainer, Robert Halfon likened the Government to a ‘tortoise’ and urged Mrs May to be bolder. The former party vice-chairman said: ‘We need to have less policy-making by tortoise and [more] policy-making by lion. Because we have to be radical. We have to stop seeing politics in transactional terms.’
Rising Tory star Johnny Mercer said the Government was in danger of getting bogged down in Brexit at the expense of other key domestic issues. And Pro-Brexit MP Nigel Mills voiced frustration with the PM, saying the Tories had ‘lost some of our reforming zeal’. He added: ‘We need to show a sense of what our values are, where we’re going, where we want to get to, and if that timeframe has to be 18 months or two years to deliver something, well then that’s fine, we can explain why that is.
‘But I think where people are perhaps just a little concerned is perhaps we don’t quite know what that direction is, what those policies are going to look like or where they’re going to perhaps come from.’
Former minister Grant Shapps, who led a botched coup attempt last autumn, urged the PM to ‘name a date’ when she will stand down, arguing it would remove uncertainty. He said he had not submitted a letter of no confidence to the backbench 1922 Committee – 48 of which are needed to trigger a leadership contest – but added: ‘An increasing number of my colleagues have.’
Mr Lidington urged the party’s warring wings to focus on the ‘bigger picture’ as the Tories remain ‘neck and neck’ with Labour in the polls. He told the BBC: ‘I think what I say to all my colleagues is the Conservative family – left, right and centre, because we’re a broad church – needs to come together in a spirit of mutual respect, there are differences in any broad church, and look at what the bigger picture is showing.’
Mr Lidington also sought to calm Tory nerves after the Chancellor last week suggested Brexit would lead to only ‘very modest’ changes.
He said Britain would have the power to diverge from EU rules during the transition.