May facing Brexiteers’ backlash as anger grows
Conservative Brexiteers rounded on the compromise struck by the Prime Minister with her Cabinet before a crucial meeting today, with several MPS openly raising the prospect of a vote of no confidence in Theresa May.
The proposal to try to keep the UK in a partial customs union, remaining tied to EU regulations on goods and agricultural products and leaving the door open to preferential migration rules for European citizens, drew threats from Eurosceptics and calls for a leadership challenge from Jacob Rees-mogg.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is reported to have attacked the plan as a “turd” at
Friday’s 12-hour Cabinet meeting at Chequers, but all of Mrs May’s senior ministers backed it and have been warned that collective responsibility will be enforced from now on.
The Prime Minister will update the House of Commons on the plan today, before addressing a meeting of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPS.
Downing Street is reported to be braced for a challenge from Brexiteers, which will be triggered if 48 MPS submit letters to the chairman of the 1922 Committee expressing no confidence in her leadership.
“If she sticks with this deal I would have no confidence in it, andiftheprimeministersticks with this deal I would have no confidence in her,” Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said yesterday, touting Mr Rees-mogg as the only potential successor who could deliver Brexit.
Mr Bridgen said the deal “crosses many of the supposed red lines” set by Mrs May and warned he wouldn’t support it “if the EU were paying us”.
Veteran Eurosceptic Sir Bill Cash said: “If people were to decide to put in those letters, you only need 48. As a matter of fact, nobody can stop them. Once the decision has been taken by those people, the chairman of the 1922 Committee has to implement the process.”
An analysis of the Chequers statement passed between Brexiteer Tory backbenchers claimed the compromise would “lead directly to a worstof-all-worlds ‘black hole’ Brexit where the UK is stuck permanently as a vassal state in the EU’S legal and regulatory tarpit”.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove appealed for unity, admitting the plan was not everything he hoped for but he was a “realist”.
He said the Prime Minister “allowed us, during the course of a day [at Chequers], to share views, to share analyses and to look at this proposal in detail but at the end of it collective responsibility reigns”.
He said MPS “have an opportunity now to get behind the Prime Minister in order to negotiate that deal”.
Mr Gove insisted that, unless the EU showed flexibility and accepted the latest proposal, “we will be in a position in March 2019, if we don’t get the deal we want, to be able to walk away”.