Theresa May could now shelve the third vote on her deal and make her next move asking the EU for a Brexit extension as her own MPs including Boris Johnson refused to back her.
Mrs May’s final pitch to Tory Brexiteers backfired yesterday after saying her opponents are unpatriotic if they do not back her Brussels divorce but warned them: ‘We will not leave the EU for many months, if ever’.
The Prime Minister is said to be willing to call off a third vote on her deal if she ‘had no chance of winning’ and crank up the pressure on her MPs by holding it just days before Britain is due to leave on March 29.
Boris Johnson last night urged MPs to vote down Mrs May’s deal for a third time if it is put to a vote this week and warned in his Daily Telegraph column that it gives the EU an ‘indefinite means of blackmail’ against the UK.
Today crisis talks with the DUP continue and if the Northern Irish party backs Mrs May’s deal a number of Eurosceptic Tories could follow – but a senior ERG source predicts that even with the DUP on board, the PM would lose by 30 to 40 votes.
David Davis says if the DUP moves then she has a ’50-50 chance’ of winning but said still may not vote for the deal while former ministers Priti Patel and Dominic Raab are expected to rebel even if Mrs May manages to win over Arlene Foster’s party.
But Brexit ringleader Jacob Rees-Mogg is softening as he insisted Mrs Mays’s deal was better than staying in for months or years, ‘however bad it is’.
Mr Rees-Mogg told LBC: ‘I genuinely haven’t made up my mind. There is a hierarchy. No deal is better than Mrs May’s deal, but Mrs May’s deal is better than not leaving. I don’t think we will get another chance to leave the European Union. ‘Delay is denial. The thought that if you get two years for something better is hopelessly optimistic.’
Mrs May could now tee-up a longer delay to Brexit at an EU summit on Thursday ensuring Tories who vote down her deal must also accept the blame for a lengthy delay to leaving the EU.
Theresa May leaves church with her husband Philip yesterday as her deal hangs in the balance and she could delay it. Boris Johnson dealt a heavy blow to her hopes of winning in the Commons after he refused to back it today
Mrs May faces an uphill battle to win a vote – if it happens – and needs to convince 75 MPs to change sides
In a direct attack on Mrs May, Boris Johnson paints her and her team as collaborators in the ‘final sabotage of Brexit’ just 11 days before Britain is due to leave the EU.
The former foreign secretary urged her to postpone the vote and use a forthcoming EU summit to seek ‘real change’ on the Irish backstop.
Mr Johnson said: ‘It would be absurd to hold the vote before that has even been attempted.’
Despite this pressure Mrs May received a string of major endorsements for her Brexit deal last night that gave fresh hope it could pass within days.
In a significant boost for the PM, former Chancellor Norman Lamont urged his fellow Brexiteers to focus on the ‘prize’ of leaving the EU – and back the deal.
Writing on the page opposite, the Eurosceptic grandee warns wavering MPs that ‘history will not understand if it is Conservative MPs who prevent us claiming our self-government’. Mrs May is hoping to build momentum behind her deal today with an agreement with the DUP that could bring dozens of Eurosceptics on board.
In a major intervention last night, Northern Ireland’s former First Minister David Trimble also dropped his objections to the so-called Irish backstop.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner praised Mrs May for securing ‘substantive’ concessions on the backstop, adding: ‘The chances of the PM getting the deal through Parliament have improved.’ Former Vote Leave chief Matthew Elliot also came out for the deal, warning Euroscptic MPs: ‘It’s May’s deal or nothing.’
But, with the trickle of Eurosceptic MPs declaring their support still failing to turn into a flood, the prospects for the deal remain on a knife edge. Mrs May was last night still deciding whether or not to press ahead with tomorrow’s planned vote on her Brexit deal. Philip Hammond and Liam Fox both said it could be pulled if it looked like it would be defeated a third time.
Downing Street was braced for Boris Johnson to ‘double down’ on his opposition.
And Tory sources said fellow leadership hopeful Dominic Raab was also indicating he would help Labour vote down the deal for a third time.
”No deal’ will prove to be the precursor to a very good deal indeed,’ wrote the Tory MPs, including former ministers Owen Paterson, Sir John Redwood and David Jones.
‘Our moral course is clear: it is not our fault that we are confronted by two unacceptable choices, but it will be our fault if we cast a positive vote in favour of either for fear of the other.’
Mr Johnson said Mrs May’s Agreement would leave the UK ‘in a position of almost unbearable weakness’ for subsequent talks on trade, risking transforming the country into ‘a kind of economic colony of Brussels’.
The backstop arrangement – under which the UK remains in a customs union until both sides agree a trade deal – gives the EU ‘an indefinite means of blackmail’, said the Brexit figurehead.
‘Unless we have some change – and at present, in the immortal phrase, nothing has changed – it is hard to ask anyone who believes in Brexit to change their mind,’ he said.
‘There is an EU summit this week. It is not too late to get real change to the backstop. It would be absurd to hold the vote before that has even been attempted.’
The 10 DUP MPs are viewed by Downing Street as pivotal, not just for the votes they provide but the influence of their stance on Conservative Eurosceptics.
DUP MLA Jim Wells told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘We still have a huge difficulty with the backstop, because we see it as a waiting room for constitutional change.
‘We could find ourselves locked in there forever in effect, and once you get in you can never get out. We have to have a mechanism where we can escape the backstop.’
Mr Wells said a proposed ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ that any changes to Northern Ireland’s relationship with the EU would be mirrored by the rest of the UK might prove ‘unenforceable’.
And he denied that the DUP was taking part in a financial ‘auction’ for its support, insisting that ‘money is not being discussed on the table at the moment’.
Mr Wells estimated that as many as 30 Tory MPs will never vote for Mrs May’s deal, meaning that a third defeat was ‘inevitable’ with or without DUP support.
So far the number of Tories publicly switching positions falls far short of the 75 MPs Mrs May needs to change sides.
Bolton West MP Chris Green told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour: ‘I want to vote against it because I don’t believe when Parliament defeated it by the biggest margin in the history of Parliament that was because it was in any way a good deal, and the substance of the deal hasn’t changed.’
But he added that a shift in the DUP’s position would have a ‘big impact’ and the implications of rejecting the deal for a third time weighed heavily on him ‘because it could lead to a general election, and we don’t know how that will pan out’.
As part of the effort to put pressure on Tory hardliners and the DUP, Chancellor Philip Hammond and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox took to the airwaves on Sunday to make clear that the Prime Minister would not chance a third defeat on her deal.
And Security Minister Ben Wallace, a close ally of Mr Johnson who chaired his abortive bid for the leadership in 2016, urged the former foreign secretary and other Tory Brexiteers to back Mrs May’s deal.
‘I know Boris very well and I know he’s passionate about leaving the European Union,’ Mr Wallace told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘If he is passionate about that, he will recognise that voting for this deal is the way to deliver Brexit and the way to deliver leaving the EU … I strongly urge my colleagues to vote for it.’
Some senior figures believe tomorrow’s vote should be delayed until next week, by which time Mrs May is expected to have requested an extension of Article 50. One Cabinet minister urged the PM to delay, adding: ‘Whenever it comes it is going to be incredibly tight. I think the DUP will come across but we also need Boris and Raab and Rees-Mogg to have a chance. Even then, we will need some more Labour MPs to come on board.’
At the start of a crunch week on Brexit:
- Philip Hammond angered Eurosceptics by saying it was now ‘physically impossible to leave on March 29’ following Parliament’s decision to back a Brexit delay.
- Dutch PM Mark Rutte likened Mrs May to the Monty Python character the Black Knight, who refused to give in even after having his limbs chopped off.
- Former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey said she would reluctantly back the deal, but called for Mrs May and other ‘feeble negotiators’ to quit.
- David Davis urged Eurosceptic MPs to back the deal, saying it was ‘capable of rescue’ in Brussels.
Mrs May’s deal suffered a record 230-vote defeat in January and lost again by 149 votes last week.
DUP MP Nigel Dodds on Friday denied cash was being talked about in discussions with the Government but insisted his party was keen to support the PM’s deal if they can
Ministers believe they are close to sealing an agreement with her DUP backers, which could see dozens of Eurosceptic Tories reluctantly fall into line behind the deal. Mr Hammond yesterday indicated the DUP could be handed more cash for Northern Ireland if they agree to back the PM’s deal.
He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show: ‘This isn’t about money. It’s about a political assurance – well, look, we are coming up to a spending review and we will have to look at all budgets, including devolved block-grant budgets.’
Gordon Henderson, a Tory MP who has voted against the deal twice, told the Mail: ‘If the Government can find a formula that satisfies our DUP colleagues, then it will satisfy me.’ Ministers were helped last night by Lord Trimble’s decision to drop his opposition to the backstop plans in the light of fresh legal assurances that it could only be temporary.
In a paper for the Policy Exchange think-tank, he said: ‘The Government has succeeded in securing substantive changes that will affect and limit the impact of the Irish backstop’. The intervention from Lord Lamont, a patron of the hardline Leave Means Leave organisation, could also prove significant.
Yesterday Mr Hammond refused three times to say whether he had ruled out offering the DUP more cash for Northern Ireland in return for backing the deal
The former Chancellor, who served in the Thatcher government, warns fellow Eurosceptics that Brexit could be lost altogether unless they stop their infighting and back the PM.
He said it was ‘wishful thinking’ to believe that Parliament wouldn’t try to stop Brexit once it had been delayed. And he said there would be ‘all to play for’ in the second round of talks with Brussels, as long as the withdrawal deal was passed. He added: ‘To assert as some Eurosceptics do that it is preferable to remain in the EU than to accept Mrs May’s deal is absurd. The PM’s deal is far from ideal. But it has one overwhelming advantage. Under her deal we will definitely leave.’
Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski, a member of the European Research Group of Eurosceptic MPs, said: ‘The mood is changing. People are getting tired of the infighting at Westminster and in the Conservative Party. They expect us to get this across the line.’
Emma Lewell-Buck, who resigned from Labour’s front bench last week to vote against a second referendum, said she and other like-minded MPs wanted to see Brexit delivered with the current deal.
But some Tory hardliners suggested they would never back down. Andrea Jenkyns, a prominent member of the ERG, said: ‘The British spirit is to fight on and not to back down to threats.’
Jeremy Corbyn yesterday warned he was ready to call a vote of no confidence in the Government this week if Mrs May’s deal is voted down again, potentially triggering an election.
He also plunged Labour’s Brexit policy into fresh confusion after revealing he could campaign to leave the EU if he succeeds in forcing a second referendum.