EU-exit deal gains support of May’s Cabinet
LONDON — British Prime Minister Theresa May persuaded her fractious Cabinet to support a draft divorce agreement with the European Union on Wednesday, a decision that triggers the final steps on the long and rocky road to Britain’s departure from the bloc.
But she faces backlash from her many political opponents and a fierce battle to get the deal through Parliament as she tries to orchestrate an orderly exit from the EU.
May hailed the Cabinet decision as a “decisive step” toward finalizing the exit deal within days. It sets in motion an elaborate diplomatic choreography of
statements and meetings.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier declared there had been “decisive progress” — the key phrase signaling that EU leaders can convene a summit to approve the deal, probably later this month.
Crucially, Barnier said that “we have now found a solution together with the U.K. to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.”
But the agreement, hammered out between U.K. and EU negotiators after 17 months of what Barnier called “very intensive” talks, infuriated anti-EU lawmakers in May’s Conservative party, who said it would leave Britain a vassal state, bound to EU rules that it has no say in making.
Those voices include several ministers in May’s Cabinet. Emerging from the five-hour meeting at No. 10 Downing St., May said the Cabinet talks had been “long, detailed and impassioned.” She said there had been a “collective decision” to back the deal, though she did not say whether it was unanimous.
“I firmly believe, with my head and my heart, that this is a decision which is in the best interests of the United Kingdom,” she said.
In a warning to her opponents, May said the choice was between her deal, “or leave with no deal, or no Brexit at all.”
If the EU backs the deal, as it likely will, it must be approved by Britain’s Parliament. That could be a challenge, since anti-EU and pro-EU legislators alike are threatening to oppose it.
Anti-EU lawmakers say the agreement will keep Britain tethered to the EU after it departs, leaving it unable to forge an independent trade policy.
On the other side of the argument, pro-EU legislators say May’s deal is worse than the status quo and that the British public should get a new vote on whether to leave.
In between those two camps are May’s supporters, who argue that the deal is the best one offered, and that the alternatives are a chaotic “nodeal” divorce that would cause huge disruption to people and businesses, or an election that could see the Conservative government replaced by the left-of-center Labor party.
Failure to secure Cabinet backing would have left May’s leadership in doubt and the process in chaos, with exit day just over four months away, on March 29.
She still faces the threat of a takeover attempt from her own party.
Under Conservative rules, a no-confidence vote in the leader is triggered if 15 percent of party lawmakers write letters requesting one. The required number currently stands at 48 lawmakers; only the lawmaker who collects the letters knows for sure how many have been submitted.
Anti-EU Conservative lawmaker Conor Burns said he wanted a change of policy rather than a new leader, but he added: “There comes a point where if the [prime minister] is insistent that she will not change the policy, then the only way to change the policy is to change the personnel.”
The main obstacle to a withdrawal agreement has long been how to ensure there are no customs posts or other checks along the border between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. Britain and the EU agree that there must be no barriers that could disrupt businesses and residents on either side of the border and undermine Northern Ireland’s hard-won peace process.
The solution in the agreement involves a “single EUU.K. customs territory” to eliminate the need for border checks.
As part of the agreement, the U.K. will agree to follow EU rules in areas like animal welfare, environmental standards and workplace protections — another source of anger for anti-EU lawmakers, who say Britain should be free to set its own rules.
The solution is intended to be temporary — superseded by a permanent trade deal. But anti-EU politicians in Britain fear it may become permanent, hampering Britain’s ability to strike new trade deals around the world.
The draft agreement also mentions potential “Northern Ireland-specific regulatory alignment” to avoid a hard border.
Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which props up May’s minority government, insists it will oppose any deal that leaves Northern Ireland subject to different rules than the rest of the U.K.
“We could not as unionists support a deal that broke up the United Kingdom,” Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster said.
CONSERVATIVE CRITICS
May already was hearing the roar of her own backbench Wednesday, as fellow Conservative party members heaped derision on a deal they had not yet seen — but that they feared contained too much compromise.
Peter Bone, a Conservative member of Parliament, warned May that she was “not delivering the Brexit people voted for.”
“Today you will lose the support of many Conservative [Parliament members] and millions of voters across the country,” he said.
Boris Johnson, who in July quit his job as foreign secretary over May’s proposals, had urged Cabinet members to reject the deal. “It’s vassal-state stuff,” Johnson said. “For the first time in 1,000 years, this place, this Parliament, will not have a say over the laws that govern this country.”
Anna Soubry, a Conservative member of Parliament who opposes leaving the bloc, said Wednesday that British voters should be offered another chance to cast a ballot on whether to support May’s deal or remain in the European Union.
“What I think is very important in all of this is, the best deal, of course, that we have with the European Union, is the deal that we currently have with the European Union,” Soubry told the BBC.
Sammy Wilson, a Parliament member for Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, told TalkRadio that May’s plan “is not so much a deal as a double-cross.”
The Democratic Unionist Party’s chief whip at Westminster, Jeffrey Donaldson, said, “This is not the right Brexit.”
He said May’s half-in, half out plan “doesn’t give the United Kingdom as a whole the opportunity to do freetrade deals and to take control of its own future.”
Leading Conservative legislator Jacob Rees-Mogg urged his colleagues to vote against the deal, saying it “will lock us into an EU customs union and EU laws. This will prevent us pursuing a U.K. trade policy based around our priorities and economy.”
Outside Parliament, Nigel Farage — a top anti-EU campaigner and a member of the European Parliament, called May’s withdrawal agreement “the worst deal in history.”
Elsewhere in Europe, there was relief that May had won approval in her divided Cabinet.
“Green light!” wrote Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen on Twitter. “Relieved that the UK government has now approved the deal reached by our negotiators.”
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s coordinator for negotiations, said, “This deal is a milestone towards a credible and sustainable future relationship between the EU and the U.K.”
In London, May’s approach was defended by former Conservative party leader William Hague, who asked his colleagues, “Did anybody really think you could leave the EU without a lot of compromises?”
Hague urged skeptics to consider the “big picture.” He told the BBC on Wednesday that the reported deal fulfills the mandate the British voters chose when they voted 52 percent to 48 percent in a June 2016 referendum to leave the European bloc.
“If what you want is to deliver on leaving the European Union, and have frictionless trade in goods at the border for the next few years until a future free-trade agreement comes into force, and have control of our own immigration policy, and keep the United Kingdom together, all at the same time — well, then, a deal is going to look pretty much like this one seems to look like. It isn’t going to be dramatically different from that,” Hague said.