MAY: BACK ME OR THERE’LL BE NO BREXIT
PM’s stark warning to rebels as she pledges: I will NOT let Brussels water down my deal
THERESA MAY has warned there may be ‘no Brexit at all’ because of attempts to wreck her controversial blueprint for Britain’s departure from the European Union.
She claims that rival Commons revolts by warring pro- and antiEurope Tory MPs threaten to sabotage hopes of winning a post-Brexit deal for Britain. And in a hard-hitting message to Brussels, the Prime Minister says she will not budge an inch on the proposed Brexit deal she agreed with Cabinet Ministers at her Chequers summit.
Writing in today’s Mail on Sunday,
Mrs May dramatically raises the stakes in her bid to win support for her proposal to make a success of leaving the EU.
Her fighting talk comes after US President Donald Trump enraged Downing Street last week by claiming that Mrs May should be more ‘brutal’ towards Brussels, and also follows reports that Conservative MPs are threatening to force her to quit.
In a bold attempt to kill off plots by both Brexit and Remainer MPs to make her tear up her new Brexit policy, the Prime Minister says: ‘My message to the country this weekend is simple: we need to keep our eyes on the prize.
‘If we don’t, we risk ending up with no Brexit at all.’
She implies that Tory Brexit rebels who have denounced her ‘common rule book’ plan with the EU on trade regulations could risk a revival of terrorism in Northern Ireland, ‘break up our precious UK’ with a new border with the Irish Republic – and destroy jobs.
She also lashes out at Conservative Remain MPs hoping to defeat her in a Commons vote this week by keeping Britain in the EU Customs
Union. It would be the ‘ultimate betrayal’ of the EU referendum and kill off the UK’s prospects of winning its own trade deals, she says, and she would ‘not stand for it’.
Vowing to dig in her heels at the next round of Brussels talks, she says: ‘Some people have asked whether our Brexit deal is just a starting point from which we will regress.
‘Let me be clear. Our Brexit deal is not some long wish-list from which negotiators get to pick and choose.
‘It is a complete plan with a set of outcomes that are non-negotiable.
‘The negotiations with the EU are not going to be easy for Brussels – and I don’t intend them to be.
‘As President Trump has said, I’m a tough negotiator. As I made clear to him, I am not going to Brussels to compromise our national interest; I am going to fight for it and fight for our Brexit deal – because it is the right deal for Britain.’
Her comments are mirrored by Mr Trump in an exclusive interview with Piers Morgan conducted on Air Force One during his visit to Britain.
The President said it was vital Mrs May took a tough line in talks with Brussels so she could ‘carve out’ a trade deal with the US.
Asked if Mrs May had managed to change his mind about his incendiary claim made on the eve of his trip that she was watering down Brexit, Mr Trump said: ‘No. My position is the same. If you speak to the Prime
Minister, she’s saying, “No, it is Brexit, but we’re leaving certain things.”’ When Mr Morgan said few believed her, Mr Trump said: ‘Well, yeah, I know.’ Mr Trump also revealed he had discussed Brexit with the Queen. He would not reveal the details of their conversation but added: ‘She said it’s a very – and she’s right – it’s a very complex problem.’ Despite Mrs May’s plea to Tories to rally round, grandees from rival wings of the Conservative Party have made dire forecasts of Brexit’s impact on the party. Brexit rebel MPs have privately set Wednesday as the deadline to obtain the 48 signatures necessary to force a leadership challenge before the Commons summer recess. One said: ‘If those signatures don’t come in by the middle of this week, Theresa May will be safe until the
autumn.’ Lord Spicer, who chaired the Conservatives’ 1922 Committee of MPs from 2001 until 2010, said the split over Europe could lead to a breakaway pro-Brexit Tory Party being launched.
‘It may be time for the Conservative Party to split into two parts,’ said Lord Spicer, who founded the Tory Brexit campaign group, the European Research Group, now run by Jacob Rees-Mogg. ‘You cannot expect those who wish to leave
the EU to vote for the opposite, and vice-versa,’ the peer added.
Veteran pro-European Ken Clarke claimed the Tories were having a ‘Brexit nervous breakdown’ which could topple the ‘unfathomable and irritating’ Mrs May.
And he warned that the Conservative Party was ‘profoundly, deeply divided about Brexit’, which had brought it to the brink of total collapse. ‘If we had a leadership
election, blood would be running in the gutter,’ said Mr Clarke.
He also mocked his detractors, saying: ‘When they can’t think of any arguments, they say, “Oh, you are trying to undermine the referendum.”’
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith told Mrs May to her face last week that she was a ‘terrible poker player’.
In a tense exchange at Downing Street, the leading Brexiteer accused her of being too soft with Brussels. ‘You have shown your hand too early,’ Mr Duncan Smith told her.
Mrs May’s allies claim that proBrexit Tories used Mr Trump’s aides to encourage him to attack her ahead of his UK visit.
Last night, Mr Rees-Mogg said: ‘Conservatives across the country expect the Government to deliver on its promises and want Members of Parliament to hold it to account.
‘To do this there may be occasions when we vote against the Government to deliver Brexit. This week’s votes will be part of this process.’
‘This is a complete plan … it’s non-negotiable’
MANY in Britain may have been duped by hopes that Brexit was a simple matter of declaring independence and sauntering off into a bright new day of total freedom from outside restrictions.
It was never going to be like that. Politics is not magic, and Theresa May is not Harry Potter. Nor is Boris Johnson. Where interests clash, negotiations split the difference using a mixture of power and guile. This rule applies to everyone.
And here we are, actually a lot further down the road to freedom than you might think from listening to the increasingly shrill yells of the Brexit fundamentalists.
The Prime Minister, showing force, steel and pragmatism, cogently explains in The Mail on Sunday today precisely what her White Paper actually proposes.
Freedom of movement, the biggest and deepest issue in the referendum, will end. So will our huge payments to the EU. The EU Commission’s control over vast areas of our law-making will go, and the European Court of Justice, though not completely excluded, will be pushed to the margins of decision-making.
Brussels control over our agriculture and fishing grounds is ruled out. European rules will still cover about a fifth of our economy, which produces goods.
But we get back our freedom to make our own regulations about the remaining 80 per cent, the vital services sector.
It was perfectly reasonable and honourable for the former Brexit Secretary, David Davis, a longstanding Eurosceptic who could not bring himself to accept this, to resign after a period of calm reflection.
But the departure of Boris Johnson, who has zigged and zagged over the European issue for years, and surprised many by his support for Brexit, looks more like pure politics.
Far more significant than the former Foreign Secretary’s rush for the exit is the decision of Michael Gove, also a lastminute convert to the Leave cause, to stay in his post. Equally remarkably, veteran sceptic Liam Fox has decided to remain as International Trade Secretary.
So, despite the kicking she has received from some of her colleagues and also from her supposed admirer (at least when he is speaking to her face), President Donald Trump, the Prime Minister can count the past few days as a quiet but definite success.
She has survived. Her opponents are not united, and have no known alternative plan. The shape of a pragmatic Brexit, giving much to the Leave side but not forgetting the doubts of the large minority of Remainers, is becoming clear.
What a contrast Mrs May’s week has been to that of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, slipping back into the world of slogan politics, of irresponsibility and anti-Americanism.
All the Government has so far is a proposal. Much now depends on the intelligence and flexibility of the EU’s negotiators, who must grasp that they, too, need a deal and that Mrs May is their best hope of getting one.
But even more must hang on the responsibility of Tory MPs, and those of other parties who are ultimately more concerned with the fate of the country than with personal ambition. Everyone is going to have to swallow some pride to achieve a decent and democratic deal.