May refuses to rule out quitting if MPS sink her deal
Prime Minister tells radio phone-in that ‘there is no question of no Brexit’ and insists UK will be better off
THERESA MAY has repeatedly refused to rule out resigning if her Brexit deal is voted down in Parliament.
The Prime Minister was asked three times to clarify if she would stake her premiership on the result of the Parliamentary vote. “This isn’t about me,” she said. “My focus is on getting this deal through.”
She said the public now wanted the Government and MPS to “get on with delivering” Brexit.
“If this deal doesn’t go through, we are back at square one,” she said.
“What we end up with is more uncertainty and more division. If we were to go back to the European Union and say ‘People didn’t like that deal, can we have another one?’, I don’t think they are going to come to us and say ‘We will give you a better deal’,” she said during a public phone-in on BBC Radio 5 Live.
“This is the deal that I think works for the UK.”
Asked what her “Plan B” was, Mrs May said that Brexit would go ahead whatever happened.
“Personally, [I think] there is no question of no Brexit, because the Government needs to deliver on what people voted for in the referendum in 2016,” she said. “As far as I am concerned, the UK is leaving the European Union on March 29 2019.”
She has previously said there was a threat of “no deal or no Brexit” if MPS failed to vote in favour of the deal.
During the call, Mrs May repeatedly criticised MPS for “trying to frustrate Brexit”.
“People’s jobs, people’s futures, the future for their children should be at the forefront of MPS’ minds.
“I believe this is the right deal for the UK. My job is to persuade people in Parliament of that view.”
Asked whether her deal was better for the UK than staying in the EU, Mrs May said the end of free movement and ending annual payments to the EU were examples of ways the country could be better off.
She said the UK will now be in a “different sort of environment” as a result.
“We will be better off in a situation which we will have outside the European Union, where we have control of all those things and are able to trade around the rest of the world.”
It came as Mrs May’s former Brexit secretary said her deal was “worse” than remaining in the EU.
Dominic Raab, the Brexiteer who resigned over the Withdrawal Agreement, said he believed the terms were so bad the UK would be better off remaining in the EU.
“I’m not going to advocate staying in the EU,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “But if you just presented me terms, this deal or EU membership, I think this would be even worse.”
Mrs May admitted the Brexit negotiations were keeping her up past midnight
‘People’s jobs, people’s futures, the future for their children should be at the forefront of MPS’ minds’
most nights. If her deal passes through Parliament, she plans to celebrate with Philip, her husband. “We will have a drink together.”
She also revealed she has received “a huge number” of messages of support from the public, including a cupcake with her face on it, sent to her by a child because she had a “tough week”.
The BBC call was Mrs May’s second phone-in with the public since she published her Brexit deal.
Last week she took questions on LBC radio and was told she should resign as she faced members of the public for the first time since the Cabinet agreed her Brexit deal.
It came as Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary and a prominent Remainer, said Leave would win if there was a second referendum. She said that those urging a new referendum should “be careful what they wish for”.
“My view is that... Leave would win again,” she told the Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast. “And not only would Leave win again but Leave voters would say ‘What didn’t you understand about Leave the first time?’.”
She added: “I have never seen anything like this and there is a tiny bit of me which thinks this might all end in a general election. It’s not clear how that would happen but you can’t escape thinking about that.”