PM close to deal but facing crucial votes
May makes a last-ditch plea to get Tory Remainers back on side
THERESA May was last night close to a deal with Tory Remainers aimed at averting defeat on vital Brexit legislation.
MPs will begin a series of knife-edge votes this afternoon as the Prime Minister tries to overturn a string of defeats inflicted by unelected peers on the EU Withdrawal Bill.
Last night she warned Tory MPs that any defeats would embolden Brussels and ‘undermine’ the prospects of securing a good Brexit deal.
It came as former education secretary Nicky Morgan, a leading Remainer, indicated she would support Mrs May in tomorrow’s vote on an amendment designed to keep Britain in a customs union with the EU.
Mrs Morgan said she would back a compromise plan – with the words ‘customs union’ being replaced with ‘customs arrangements’ – adding that it would help ‘buy time’ for the Prime Minister ahead of a crunch Brussels summit at the end of this month.
Addressing the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs last night, Mrs May said: ‘We must think about the message Parliament will send to the European Union this week. I am trying to negotiate the best deal for Britain.
‘I am confident I can get a deal that allows us to strike our own trade deals while having a border with the EU which is as frictionless as possible. But if the Lords amendments are allowed to stand, that negotiating position will be undermined.’
Mrs May is keen to send a clear message to Brussels and the Lords by showing she can deliver on her Brexit legislation. Ministers have accepted one minor Lords amendment and will seek to amend or overturn a further 14 in the coming 48 hours.
The crunch moments will come this afternoon – when MPs debate calls for Parliament to be given a so-called meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal – and tomorrow, when they debate the customs union. Tory whips remained nervous last night about the so-called ‘meaningful vote’ amendment, despite concessions last week. One source warned the outcome could rest on the position of a handful of Brexit-supporting Labour MPs.
The plan, passed by the Lords, would allow Parliament to take charge of negotiations if MPs do not like the deal, effectively undermining Mrs May’s position. Commons sources last night said the amendment represented ‘unprecedented interference’ in the Government’s power to negotiate foreign treaties.
Former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke said he would back the measure, adding: ‘Without our involvement, the Government will face the same situation it faced last week, when the final agreement comes round, because the Brexiters will give threats and briefings against any deal unless they’re satisfied with it. They will have a veto, and Parliament will have no effective control.’
Party whips were last night understood to be close to a deal with Tory Remainers designed to avert defeat tomorrow on the amendment designed to keep Britain in the customs union. It would require ministers to report back to Parliament on the efforts they had made to keep Britain in a customs union with Brussels.
Solicitor General Robert Buckland predicted the Tory rebellion would fizzle out. ‘We will hang together or we’ll all hang separately,’ he said.
But Mr Clarke said Donald Trump’s approach to trade made it vital to stick close to the customs union and single market. ‘We are going to need it more in the future than in the past,’ he said.
However, others plan to keep their powder dry until next month when they will use the Trade Bill to push for membership of a customs union with the EU.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn is trying to contain a Labour rebellion over membership of the single market. Dozens of his MPs are expected to defy his order to abstain on an amendment that would keep the UK in the European Economic Area.
‘We must think about the message’
‘Hang together or hang separately’
ON this crunch day for democracy, most Britons (including Remain voters) now want only to get on with Brexit, while an obdurate Establishment still refuses to take Leave for an answer.
And now die-hard Tory Europhiles, in unholy alliance with an utterly unscrupulous Labour leadership, threaten to support the Lords’ Brexit-wrecking amendments and thereby render the EU referendum result all but meaningless.
For make no mistake, if the worst of these changes are passed into law – scrapping a firm date for Brexit, handing Parliament the right to prolong negotiations indefinitely and committing the Government to press for continued membership of the customs union and single market – the consequences for Britain would be disastrous.
Not only would we be left in the worst of all possible worlds, locked into EU rules on tariffs and free movement while losing any say in making them.
But at a stroke, our negotiators would be deprived of their trump card – the threat to leave the EU without a deal, taking with us our £39billion divorce settlement and free access to our lucrative markets, on which French farmers, German car makers and millions of others on the Continent depend for their livelihoods.
Meanwhile, victory for Remainers this week would humiliate Theresa May, opening up the nightmare possibility of installing Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street, with his Marxist henchman John McDonnell in charge of taxpayers’ cash at the Treasury.
Yes, opponents say Brexit talks are going badly. But whose fault is that when they themselves are egging on the Brussels negotiators?
If only our politicians would present a united front, our prospects of striking a deal right for Britain would be improved. Indeed, the irony is that while the UK has gone from strength to strength since the Brexit vote the EU has rarely seemed weaker.
With rampant youth unemployment throughout the southern eurozone, and millions railing against mass migration, anti-Brussels parties are in the ascendant everywhere.
By rights, our negotiators should be exploiting this weakness for all it’s worth.
This paper fervently hopes that today and tomorrow, MPs will show respect for democracy, defeat the Lords amendments and put Brexit back on course.