Defiant May squares up to rebels and warns: We will deliver on people’s vote
THERESA May yesterday vowed to stop her Brexit plans being wrecked by a Conservative revolt in the Commons on Tuesday.
Rebel Tories are poised to back moves by the Lords to keep the UK in the customs union and give Parliament the right to send her back to Brussels to get a better deal.
Amid fevered talk of a challenge to Mrs May if she is defeated on Tuesday, she warned Remain rebels that they had no right to side with the Lords in the epic showdown.
Speaking at the G7 in Quebec, she said Conservative MPs had a duty to make sure the EU Withdrawal Bill was ready when Britain cuts ties with Brussels next March – and peers must not be allowed to sabotage it. She said: ‘The Lords has a revising role to play – but some of the amendments passed and the comments made went far beyond that. We are delivering on the decision made by the country and we will not accept anything that prevents us from taking back control of our money, laws and borders.’
Her fighting talk was in contrast to her response to being asked if she would personally campaign for Brexit if the referendum took place now. She dodged the question.
Asked by journalist and former Boris Johnson spin doctor Guto Harri in a new TV show on Wales’s SC4 channel: ‘Would you campaign for Brexit if it was happening now?’, she replied: ‘We’re in different circumstances today. It’s a complex task but I’m very clear that it’s for politicians to deliver on the vote that the British people gave.’
It is the latest in a series of equivocal replies Mrs May has made since she campaigned for Remain.
Her warning came amid claims that rebel Conservative peers are refusing to back down.
Former Labour Minister and proBrexit campaigner Frank Field, who has close links with senior Tories, claimed pro-Remain peers would try to reverse any bid by MPs to reject their amendments. If they did, he would introduce a law to scrap the Lords. Mr Field said: ‘To defy the elected House once is a misfortune. To defy it twice is an act of insurrection.’
His message was echoed by proBrexit Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who said any Conservative MP who voted against the Government should be thrown out of the party.
He also lambasted ‘appeaser’ Mrs May, claiming her ‘evident and repeated lack of enthusiasm for Brexit’ had ‘emboldened’ the EU and some of her own MPs.
But the PM won strong support from former deputy Damian Green, who claimed she would ‘easily’ win the key votes on Tuesday. Most Tory MPs wanted to ‘give her the strongest hand’ before her next Brussels summit this month, Mr Green said.