Ministers in talks with Labour over Chequers
Whips’ office in talks with up to 25 Opposition members to get Brexit deal vote through Parliament
Ministers are in talks with as many as 25 Labour MPS to force through Theresa May’s Chequers Brexit deal. The Government’s whips’ office has spent recent months making contact with the MPS as a backup option for when the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal is put to a vote in early December, The Daily Telegraph has been told.
The talks have infuriated Eurosceptic Tory MPS, who are threatening to vote against elements of the Budget and other “money bills” to force Mrs May to drop her Chequers plan. They back a looser Canada-plus free-trade deal with the EU.
MINISTERS are in talks with as many as 25 Labour MPS to force through Theresa May’s Chequers Brexit deal.
The Government’s whips’ office has spent recent months making contact with the MPS as a backup option for when the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal is put to a vote in early December, The Daily Telegraph has been told.
It has infuriated Eurosceptic Tory MPS, who are threatening to vote against elements of the Budget and other “money bills” to force Mrs May to drop her Chequers plan. They back a looser Canada-plus free-trade deal with the EU over the closer ties agreed by Mrs May’s Cabinet at Chequers this summer.
The scale of the talks would explain why Cabinet ministers are overwhelmingly confident that the Government can get its Chequers deal through the House of Commons. One government source said the whips were engaged in an “ingenious plan” to get “25 Labour MPS to vote” for the Chequers proposal in Parliament before Christmas.
No 10 hopes this would outgun a hardcore group of 20 Tory members of the European Research Group (ERG) who will vote against the deal. The source said the whips were playing “a very dangerous game”.
A senior member of the ERG said that they had heard of the Labour talks but had been assured by senior figures at No 10 that “they would never do this”. ERG sources claimed that as many as 80 MPS “won’t blink” and were threatening to vote against the Budget later this month to try to force the Government to change tack on Brexit.
The ERG is due to meet tomorrow to set out plans for a guerrilla campaign in Westminster against Mrs May’s Chequers proposal. One source said: “We are heading for a very bad place in the Commons, a place where a phalanx of Tory MPS simply won’t blink when presented with a choice – BRINO [Brexit In Name Only] or an election.
“This is a place where – unlike Maastricht – there’s already no Tory majority. So it will take far fewer to rebel by winning.” A No 10 spokesman declined to comment on the claims.
Peter Kyle, a Labour MP, said the Prime Minister was “grovelling for help to get her dog’s dinner of a plan through. She won’t get it and doesn’t deserve it”.
It came as pop stars including Bob Geldof faced ridicule for telling the Prime Minister to “imagine Britain without music” if the UK exits the EU without a deal on Brexit.
A draft seen by The Observer – signed by Geldof “and friends” including Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker and Simon Rattle – warned a no-deal Brexit would be “serious madness” and mean that British music would be silenced “in a self-built cultural jail”.
Tory Eurosceptics mocked the letter. Jacob Rees-mogg, the ERG chairman, said: “Handel did not need the free movement of people to come to England and compose the Messiah.”
Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, said yesterday that Japan would welcome Britain to the Trans-pacific Partnership trade deal.
♦ Last night, Brexiteers were reported to have warned Mrs May that any customs arrangement agreed with the EU as part of a Brexit deal must end by the next election, according to The Times.